The Social Distancing Badge Uses LIDAR to Help You Self-Isolate

If at all possible, you should be staying home for the time being to protect yourself from COVID-19. But staying completely quarantined isn’t possible for many people. Maybe you have an essential job, need to do some grocery shopping, or want to go outside for a jog. In situations like that, you’ll want to — at the very least — maintain social distancing. Unfortunately it can be difficult to judge how far away other people are, and even more difficult to keep them from getting too close. The Social Distancing Badge will let them know the precise distance between you and shame them into staying away.

Recently launched on Kickstarter, the Social Distancing Badge is made by the same people who developed the SensorDots platform, which is like “a KVM switch, but for electronics.” Unlike most electronic badges we see, the Social Distancing Badge has an actual purpose — even if it will no longer be necessary in a few months if we’re lucky. The most practical advice for protecting yourself during the current coronavirus pandemic is to stay as far away as possible from other people. Two meters (about six feet) is the bare minimum recommended distance to keep between yourself and anyone you don’t live with, and this badge makes that a bit easier to achieve.

It does that by using a LIDAR sensor to measure the distance between you and whatever is in front of you. That sensor is an eye-safe STMicroelectronics VL53L1 infrared LIDAR module. An Arduino-compatible ATmega328PB microcontroller is used to monitor the sensor, and then shows the distance on a four digit seven-segment display. Power comes from a rechargeable 100mAh lithium-ion battery cell. That’s enough charge to last about 50 hours in low update mode. GPIO pins are accessible for hacking, so you can easily expand the badge’s capability. If you like badges, then this one is a great way to show passersby that you’re serious about social distancing.

If you want the Social Distancing Badge, the Kickstarter campaign will be running until April 20th. A single badge will cost you AU$ 60 (about $36 USD). The first batch of badges is expected to be delivered in May.