“A device that mounts on top of a traditional keypad and transforms it into a touch-free and bluetooth controllable one.
Nowadays we are all facing the Covid-19 pandemic; we know that there are multiple ways to get infected and one of these is by touching someone who is infected or by touching something that has been touched by someone who is infected. In fact the the virus resists several hours on certain surfaces.
During our daily live we touch many objects that had been touched by others before. When we get into an elevator, for example, we have to press a button to select the desired floor.
This project is taught for all those machines that relay on a traditional keypad (elevators self-service petrol station, public water dispenser), where the user has to physically touch buttons of a keypad, exposing himself and others to the risk of getting infected. This adaptor can be configured for every keypad layout and than it has to be mounted on top of the traditional keypad. It provides a touch-free interface (a matrix of Infrared sensors) where the user does not need to touch the device because the presence of his finger is detected when it is 2-3 cm away; then the adaptor will take care of pressing the physical button. The other type of interaction is through bluetooth: in this case the user has to connect his phone to the adaptor by scanning the associated QR code and then he can interact with the keypad through the application, which reproduces on the display a digital copy of the original keypad. If you press a button from the application, the adaptor will press that button on the keypad of the machine.
The way this project could help preventing viruses spreading is that it removes the contact between the machine and the user.
This project can also be seen as a “bridge” from the world of today where we still need to physically interact with machines, to a possible world of tomorrow where every interaction is touch-less, maybe even machines controlled with our mind.”