Sin Language: Covid Tracking With Ultrasound

Team: 13

School: New Mexico School for the Arts

Area of Science: Engineering


Proposal: As school and workplaces begin to reopen, contact tracing for COVID-19 becomes increasingly important. We need to be able to determine when people have come within 6 feet of each other. Further, we need to be able to trace back who an infected person has come in contact with while maintaining their individual privacy. The relative locations of objects can be determined by the trilateration of waves that they emit. We plan to use ultrasonic chirps from cell phones to model the interaction of objects at short range distances and implement this method of trilateration.

First we will do feasibility tests to determine if the hardware on the phones will meet our needs. Then we will develop a simple localized proximity system using ultrasonic chirps from each phone. The proximity sensor will trigger when any two phones come within a certain distance. Next, we hope to expand the system to calculate a 2D position of a 4th phone when given the distance between the other 3+ phones. Finally, we hope to explore a system of localized communication using ultrasonic waves between phones.


Mentor: Stephen Guerin


Team Members:

  Brandon Morrison
  Rowan Jansens
  Madelyn Kingston

Sponsoring Teacher: Mohit Dubey

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