Smart autonomous thermometer system to assist COVID-19 pandemic monitoring in smart campuses

COVID-19 pandemic has impacted human lives from different aspects during the last months. The number of recorder cases is increasingly growing. The infection rate spikes due to unprotected contact with people with fever or respiratory symptoms. Fever is one of the common symptoms of corona virus infection. Thus, measuring the body temperature and tracing its change is an important indicator. It is a recommended practice to inspect suspected cases. For campuses with big number of residents and visitors, monitoring the temperature arises a new challenge as it requires huge number of trained medical staff and imposes the direct contact between the medical staff and the person under test. Also, this practice requires the direct contact between the medical staff and the person under test, which may cause the transmission of the virus. In this paper a non-contact autonomous smart thermometer system is proposed. The thermometer measures forehead temperature remotely, without the need for human operation. The system indicates the person identity and records the measured temperature enabling the tracing of temperature of engaged persons and further analysis of gathered data. In this paper, the system architecture and the implementation of the proposed system is described. Testing and verification processes demonstrate its effectiveness and feasibility. © 2020 Institution of Engineering and Technology. All rights reserved.