The problem Face Alert System solves

With the outbreak of Covid-19, health care professionals are urging people to regularly refrain from touching their face. There’s no question it’s easier said than done. According to a study, people touch their faces more than 20 times an hour on average. About 44 percent of the time, it involves contact with the eyes, nose, or mouth. From picking up objects to turning door knobs, we’re constantly touching surfaces contaminated with pathogens. The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is believed to be spread mostly by inhaling droplets released when an infected individual coughs or sneezes. But the virus can also land on surfaces that we touch with our hands. But as anyone who has consciously tried to do so knows, it’s hard. Touching our face is an act that most people perform without thinking. We continue to repeat it even if we intend to or not.

What Is Being Done?

Government has made the use of face mask mandatory but we have seen at times people don’t put the face mask on due to various reasons such as:

1. Face masks needed to be changed after every few days hence making the prevention costly.
2. Many people have reported difficulty in breathing due to face masks.
3. People do not put on their face masks when they’re at home but the chances of them getting infected still persists.
4. Eyes of the person aren’t covered which is also a potential target for the virus.

Benefits of using our App:

This app won’t replace the use of facemask and hand sanitizer but it acts as a second line of defence to stop the spread of covid-19.

Facemasks don’t cover eyes and this can be an entry point for the virus. Hence using our solution we can prevent touching our eyes even when our face mask is on.

People generally don’t wear face masks at home, but the danger of getting infected still persists. Hence our app can provide all-round protection without even actually using it.

It’s like a boon to people with Asthama as they can't put their face masks on for long.

Challenges I ran into

Q. What all devices and OS your app has supported?
We’ve currently released apps for smartphones (for testing purpose) and smartwatches (for Wear OS watches), development of the app for other devices are under processes such as Fitbit and Fossil.

Q. What if we don’t have an internet connection?
The first version of our app requires internet to operate but we’re working on to deploy the system locally and next version of the app won’t require Internet to work on.

Q. While I’m on call will my band vibrate continuously?
No, we’ve taken care of that problem therefore when you’re on a call the app gets an alert and it doesn’t vibrate, we’ve achieved this using PROXIMITY SENSOR.

Q. What is the accuracy of the model you’ve used?
We’ve used different models to test and the model with the best accuracy is used for deployment. Currently, it’s accuracy is around 91%.