ACTIVE COVID19 TRACKER
ACTIVE COVID19 TRACKER
TRACK ACTIVE AND QUARANTINE PEOPLE
Overview
World is under tremendous pressure with ongoing pandemic of Corona Virus. There is neither defined procedure to treat nor vaccines avoid the further spread of this disease. The only preventive measure that everyone is considering today is “social distancing”. India seem to be handling the situation more efficiently, with the help of extended lockdowns, contact tracing for Covid19 positive patients and quarantining them at their home or in quarantine zones. However, there are always challenges, imposing a rule.
There are incidents, wherein these people who are quarantined, knowingly or unknowingly, move out of their home and roam around, increasing the risk of transferring corona virus, to the society. We have also observed cases in past, due to which the number of cases has exponentially increased.
Hence, ioGenies and team has come-up with a solution, named as “Active Covid19 Tracker – ACT” that help to accurately monitor these quarantined people and give them alerts (self-awareness), as they come out of their quarantine area. Also, in case they do not return to their zones, then alerts can be provided to their guardians and as a next level to police or other government authority who is monitoring the same.
This solution can track these people in the allocated quarantined zone of 15-20 feet and generate alerts in case of any violations.
Solution Detail
System Architecture :
Description
The proposed tracker solution is based on low power BLE technology. The typical signal coverage of BLE system with obstacle is around 15-20 feet. The proposed system makes use of this BLE limitation to track a person in the confined zone.
The proposed solution comprises for following components.
1. Zone device
This is a low power battery operated BLE device that is fixed the place of quarantine person. This device creates a wireless radial fence. The fence has a radius of around 15 feet, which can be adjusted with the transmitting power of zone device. This zone device transmits beacon at a regular interval of 15 secs. Each device has a unique ID.
2. Pendant unit
Pendant unit is like zone device. It is a low power BLE pendant. It is worn by quarantine person. This unit transmits beacon at regular interval, with a default as 15 sec. This is an IP67 device and hence, can sustain water spray, shower, sweat, etc. Also, the chain used can be sealed after wearing so that the quarantine person cannot remove the same. Also, an electrical feedback can be enabled with design of pendant device. This feedback can alert the system if someone tries to break the chain.
3. Mobile application
A mobile application is installed on both quarantine person and one of the guardians. This application uses GPS and BT of mobile to track the information about quarantine person.
While the devices are installed in quarantine zone and quarantine person, all information about quarantine person, devices and location information is captured in mobile application. This data is registered on cloud portal.
The application runs in background and keeps on scanning for nearby BLE tags. This data is periodically transferred to cloud. The signals / beacons from both zone device and pendant are captured in mobile application. The algorithm built in mobile application alerts the quarantine person if he moves out of quarantine zone. Same information is also transferred to cloud.
4. Cloud application
Cloud application is hosted on IoT servers. This application captures data from all mobile applications and displays the location of all quarantine persons on map. It also, shows the active alerts, whenever a person moves out of quarantine zone.
Additional intelligence can be embedded in cloud application, to automatically place a call via IVR to any police station or concerned government authority.
Alerts generated :
Person has moved out of zone but within home with mobile.
Person moved out of home
Zone device is tampered
Pendant removed
Mobile device switched off
Advantages of the system :
- Affordable pricing – total solution cost less than INR 1000.
- Can be easily integrated with Aarogya Setu application.
- No dependency on GPS service for indoor positioning within quarantined zone. However, GPS is required to know the exact location of the person, when he is out of zone.
- Contact tracing can be done even if the quarantined person does not carry the mobile phone (which is limitation of Aarogya Setu).
- Extended battery life of devices makes it reusable after proper sanitization.
- Offline data storage can be done, in case of loss of connectivity.
Future Additions
Making Pendant device smart :
We can also enable the pendant device with additional functionalities with the help of addition of sensors and AI as below,
- Periodic temperature monitoring
- Fall detection
- Detect coughing
- Detect breathing pattern
Integration with Arogya Setu :
The mobile application can be integrated with Arogya setu application, so that same application be utilized to gather the information from these devices. Further to this, Arogya setu application can also alert the people in vicinity, if any quarantine person is roaming around. Also, tracking of such quarantine person can be easily enabled, with the help of Arogya setu application.
