IO, Surabaya – The increase in COVID-19 cases in industrial clusters has caught the attention of many, including three students of the Instrumentation Engineering Department, Vocational Faculty, Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS), Surabaya, East Java. Eko Rian Fauzi, Mia Dwi Susanti, and Arinditya Berlinda, who are members of a team called “Armies” initiated “Co-Saber: Covid-19 Smart Band and Smart Detector”, to inhibit the spread of the virus among workers in small and medium industries.
The Armies team feels the need to take part in suppressing the transmission of COVID-19. The reason is since this pandemic broke out, many small industries have been affected and have even gone out of business. Even though the government implemented a new habitual adaptation period to restore the wheels of the economy in June, the impact of this policy has added to a new cluster of the spread of COVID-19.
“We consider the present method using a fingerprint to be one of the causes of the spread of the virus. Therefore, Co-Saber is here as a solution,” said Eko, Armies Team Leader, in a release received by the Independent Observer, Thursday (10/1/2020).
Co-Saber consists of two devices, namely, Smart Band and Smart Detector which are connected by an internet connection. The Smart Band is specially designed to resemble a bracelet worn by workers. “This tool functions to monitor the travel history of workers, so that it is accompanied by a Global Positioning System (GPS),” he said.
Meanwhile, the Smart Detector is used as a non-contact presence tool before workers enter the work location. To minimize physical contact, a face detection feature is embedded, to identify workers showing up for work. “This device also has an infrared ray-based temperature sensor to measure body temperature without making physical contact,” added the young man from Probolinggo, East Java.
The way it works is as follows: first, the ultrasonic sensor identifies someone in front of the device. If detected, the camera will then take a facial image. “The results will be processed using face detection technology to find out the identity of the workers who are attending.”
Furthermore, the travel history of the worker will be retrieved from Cloud Storage and automatically identified, whether the worker visited one or more locations on the COVID-19 blacklist. The results of the temperature identification and the location visited will be reprocessed and displayed by the indicator.
Thanks to this brilliant idea, Co-Saber won first place in a national competition held by IT Telkom Purwokerto, Central Java. In addition to teamwork, Eko said that the lecturers of the Instrumentation Engineering Department played an important role in evolving this idea. “Especially Mrs. Sefi Novendra as our supervisor, who gave a lot of suggestions and input in developing this Co-Saber,” he said.
Eko revealed that there was already a similar technology in 2014, especially in the use of facial detection as an online presence. What distinguishes this study is that the Co-Saber technology is equipped with features measuring body temperature and identifying travel history, so that it can adjust to the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic currently affecting the world.
With this technology, Eko hopes to help Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) actors who are still far from technological touch and are threatened with stalled operations due to a pandemic that has yet to end. “We also hope that with the application of this technology in the industrial world, workers can be more disciplined by not visiting places with a high risk of virus transmission,” he said. (est)