S. Vishnu Sharma
IIT Mandi researchers have developed LakshmanRekha, an Artificial Intelligence, biometric driven home quarantine management application (HQMA) for COVID patients.
The app developed by IIT Mandi researchers uses a combination of biometric verification, geofencing, and artificial intelligence to continuously monitor and accurately detect the identity of a home quarantined person.
In addition to the quarantine management, this application brought out by IIT Mandi researchers can also serve as an unbreachable mobile phone platform for normal (non-COVID) mobile users, situations like under curfew, or any national emergency, for identifying the violators or lawbreakers.
The results of work done by IIT Mandi researchers was funded by Department of Science and Technology and have been published in the IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine.
IIT Mandi researchers develop great ‘LakshmanRekha’
The IIT Mandi researchers comprised Dr. Aditya Nigam, Assistant Professor, School of Computing & Electrical Engineering, IIT Mandi and Co-investigators Dr. Arnav Bhavsar, Associate Professors, School of Computing & Electrical Engineering, along with research scholars, Mr. Daksh Thapar and Mr. Piyush Goyal of IIT Mandi.
Dr. Aditya Nigam is the lead scientist among the IIT Mandi researchers.
The paper has been authored by lead scientist among IIT Mandi researchers and co-investigators Dr. Arnav Bhavsar, Mr. Daksh Thapar and Piyush Goyal with Dr. Gaurav Jaiswal from IIT Delhi and Dr. Kamlesh Tiwari and Mr. Rohit Bhardwaj of BITS Pilani, Rajasthan.
Speaking about LakshmanRekha brought out by IIT Mandi researchers, Dr. Aditya Nigam said they have developed a pilot version of LakshmanRekha mobile application and tested it over small datasets.
The obtained results are very good and now we are working to add more functionality, scalability and usability to make it ready for deployment, said Dr Aditya who is the lead scientist among IIT Mandi researchers.
In existing quarantine management mobile applications, individuals under self-isolation are enforced to share their instantaneous position routinely via geofencing technology or they are required to upload a face selfie every hour or ten times a day, say IIT Mandi researchers.
But these geofencing applications fail to ensure the user identity throughout the time because individuals can leave cell phones in isolation zones and move in and out, leading to disobey the self-isolation rules, say IIT Mandi researchers.
IIT Mandi researchers further said the idea of uploading a face selfie every hour cannot ensure the patient’s stay in a geofenced area as they can also try to fool the system by using a photo containing its registered face.
To mitigate these risks, LakshmanRekha by IIT Mandi researchers matches the quarantine location of the individual with the location from where they have uploaded the biometric data.
Along with this, using AI, the application by IIT Mandi researchers continually computes an authentication score that can measure how certain it is, that the quarantined user is also the one using the mobile.
If the application brought out by IIT Mandi researchers detects any action indicating that the user identity has been changed, it will directly notify the authorities for necessary action.
Considering the fact that we are still working on tracking the rapid spread of Coronavirus in society, it has become crucial to continuously monitor and track the movements of every person with symptoms, LakshmanRekha developed by IIT Mandi researchers can play a key role in the home quarantine management system.
Since the first batch of 97 students joined in July 2009, IIT Mandi has grown to currently host 125 faculty and 1,833 students who are enrolled in various programs of studies in undergraduate, postgraduate, and research programs, and 1516 alumni.
IIT Mandi is a fully residential campus with 1.4 lakh sq. m. buildings completed. It has a guest house with 88 rooms, a 750-seater Auditorium, a campus school, a sports complex, and a hospital.
IIT Mandi has four Academic Schools and three major Research Centers.
The Schools are School of Computing and Electrical Engineering, School of Basic Sciences, School of Engineering, and School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
The Centers are Advanced Materials Research Centre (AMRC; set up with an investment of Rs. 60 crores), Centre for Design and Fabrication of Electrical Devices (C4DFED; has Rs. 50 crores worth of fabrication tools), and BioX Centre (has acquired research equipment worth Rs. 15 crores).
In 2017, the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, selected IIT Mandi to lead the prestigious Rs. 10 crore FarmerZone Project.