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Looking at the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus, a 15-year-old Indian-American girl has invented a cap which alerts users through vibrating and beeping if someone comes into their six-foot detection range.
Neha Shukla's innovative idea is aimed at preventing the rapid spread of the contagious disease as people across the globe are advised to maintain proper social distancing.
"I wanted to bring about a change during the COVID-19 pandemic for which I applied to the 'Girls With Impact' programme in the United States that teaches entrepreneurial skills to young girls", Shukla told the Indian daily the Hindustan Times.
Shukla shared that keeping in mind the pandemic, she set out to create a social distancing device which utilises ultrasonic sensors and microprocessors to detect when a person crosses that six-foot range.
"I started working on the device in April that would keep people six feet apart. And to make it useful, I chose a cap. It’s a microprocessor based device that’s embedded in a hat", she explained.
Shukla further said she has coded a programme that causes these ultrasonic sensors to send out these pulses (ultrasonic waves).
"Now, when these waves collide with a person within that six-foot detection range, this raw data calculation is converted to a system that it would understand and hence alert the user", she explained.
The teenage girl is now working on further improving the design of the device to make it much easier to wear.
"I am also working on developing a Bluetooth app that will send the same notification to your phone as well and you can keep a track of that history".
According to the official data provided by Johns Hopkins University, the US has reported over 5.8 million COVID-19 cases, while over 179,730 people have died due to the virus.