IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - November/December 2021 - 39

(YunTech) campus with a setup of 25 epidemicprevention
stations. As Figure 1 shows, this is a
sample of the epidemic-prevention process;
each student needs to spend about 10 minutes
for the entire process.
Our system follows the basic inspection proFigure
1. Epidemic-prevention process in YunTech.
also have their body temperatures measured
before they enter a building.6 Thanks to these
preventive measures, Taiwan went without a
local coronavirus outbreak for many days. The
epidemic spread is prevented in Taiwan because
of the experience during SARS in 2003, not to
mention countrywide cooperation and support
from the population as a whole.
As previously mentioned, antiepidemic measures
and screening tools should be adopted in
universities/schools where course lecturing still
takes place in a classroom. In addition to wearing
a mask and keeping social distance, taking
body temperature, disinfection, and identification
confirmation before entering a building or
staying in a closed public space are also quite
effective.
Human body temperature measurement can
be conducted with infrared cameras or ear/forehead/oral
thermometers.7
So far, infrared cameras are used in entrance
gates of MRT stations or public places where a
large number of people access, but it is expensive
equipment. General local governments,
schools, and small-scale enterprises may not be
able to afford such high-scale prevention. Forehead
thermometers normally require manual
operation.8 It would require a lot of time and
manpower for when someone should provide
the service of body temperature measurement,
hand disinfection, and identity verification for
users who enter buildings or stations at entrances.
However, people who are in charge of providing
the service may be unwillingly exposed to
a significantly higher risk of infection. For example,
there are about 10 thousand people in the
Yunlin University of Science and Technology
November/December 2021
cess based on CDC policies. Therefore, we
thought it could be a way to enhance preparedness
for epidemic prevention, especially in
developing countries in Asia, such as Vietnam,
as they need more rigorous training of medical
students and use some tools to enhance preparedness
for epidemic prevention.9
IMPLEMENTATION METHOD
In this work, an integrated system that can
automatically perform required epidemic-prevention
services by combining a forehead thermometer,
alcohol sprayer, identity login system,
and ultrasonic sensor for distance measurement
is illustrated in Figure 2. For campus epidemic
prevention, the smart system developed in this
work features the following three critical functions:
1) automatic disinfection (alcohol spraying);
2) automatic forehead temperature
measurement; and 3) user ID registration.
In this work, an Arduino UNO REV3 is used to
control the forehead thermometer and alcohol
sprayer. Moreover, an application (App) is developed
to perform data entry and Internet transmission
for information such as forehead
temperature and the identification number of
users. For initialization, the user ID is read from
a faculty/staff/student ID card by the App
through the Near Field Communication (NFC).
The user can then be identified through the Web
API on the server. The user then leans forward
to approach the intelligent system. When their
forehead is within range of the ultrasound detection,
the forehead thermometer will be triggered
by the controller and perform its function. The
measured temperature is delivered to a mobile
via Bluetooth and then uploaded to the server
via the Internet.
If the user has a fever, the uploaded information
can help the system mark them as a case
with fever and track their footprint along with
their system location. In other words, users with
suspicious symptoms can be detected early by
39
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