With the opening of various public places it becomes extremely difficult to maintain the recommended 2m gap in closed places like banks and shops. These buildings were never designed to isolate the entrants from the shopkeepers or tellers(secretary/clerk - whatever you call it).
Hence, even though some measures like plastic screen separators and token based service are being taken, the persons attending to visitors to an office or a shop are still at great risk of infection. There have been many instances where shopkeepers and service managers at offices have become super-spreaders of the virus. Thus, the problem exists both ways and a method needs to be developed to minimize in-person contact
My ideaA voice assistant for offices for shops and offices that gives visual and sound-based instructions to visitors, takes orders and forwards either party to a collection tray or bin for exchange of physical objects. The assistant would also display instructions on the display and would use a gesture sensor to take inputs from the user.
There are solutions that exist like service robots at restaurants and banks. However, their use is not widespread due to the initial investment to be made in such a solution.
My solution is better as it automates the job of a secretary or a waiter thus preventing any infection to either party. The physical exchange of objects just cant be automated without significant investment in hardware. This project just aims to automate whatever can be automated without significant investment
Plan of ActionThe gesture sensor sends infered gestures to the ESP32 uC in the AWS IoT Edukit which processes the signals and based on that performs one of a set of pre-allocated tasks. The instructions to the user are sent verbally using the speaker on the kit.
The display is used to serve as a menu similar to the one in ATMs. The ESP32 uC would be used to create a local server to which the shopkeeper or bank teller may connect and receive instructions right on their phones through a web app.
Based on the instructions, physical objects that need to be exchanged can be done at an isolated bin or tray. The customer data would also be logged onto the AWS cloud database(Greengrass) to keep track of various transactions at the bank/shop.
The Sad Part
I have never had any issues picking up a new development environment or new hardware but this time I just didn`t have time enough to understand the AWS core 2 IoT kit. The complexity was much above my expectations and whenever I set out to do something off the block(not in the documentation I could not do it. The number of bugs on my VS Code terminal really demotivated me but I kept on trying to run the Alexa VOice COntrol API. Unfortunately, I wasn`t succesful and given the limited time there is no way I can compete with a strong entry right now. However, I would surely try to handle the errors and post this amazing project soon
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