COVID-19 Research at IITs

Initiatives taken by IITs under the Area: Surveillance
1

Project Title : Use of "SAFE" app for Quarantine Adherence

Expected Outcome : Verifying if a quarantined person is adhering to the same
Expected Timeline : Under testing with stakeholders
Remarks : App already developed for attendance purposes and is being tested for the current purpose
URL : http://safe.cse.iitb.ac.in/
PI Details : Prof. Bhaskaran Raman and Prof. Kameswari Chebrolu, , 022-25767908 and 022-25767976 respectively , br@cse.iitb.ac.in and chebrolu@cse.iitb.ac.in respectively

IIT Bombay
2

Project Title : Tracking and Tracing of Asymptotic Carriers During Pandemic

Expected Outcome : An App that can be used to track asymptotics, alert if any asymptotic is in close proximity and trace all peoples who got in close proximity with asymptotics
Expected Timeline : CORONTINE app already developed and under testing
Remarks : Talks with government agencies and industry partners for deployment
URL :
PI Details : Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Prof. Manjesh K Hanawal, IE OR , 022-25767728 and 022-25765420 , ganesh@cse.iitb.ac.in and mhanawal@iitb.ac.in

IIT Bombay
3

Project Title : Hands free Thermal scanner (for use in buildings etc.)

Expected Outcome : A prototype for hands-free thermal scanner. As opposed to thermal scanners currently being used, this is expected to be fast and it does not need human operation. It can be passively mounted (eg., on doorways, entrances or in large rooms) and can monitor several people simultaneously (depending on installation and orientation).
Expected Timeline : 1 month (for a market-ready product)
Remarks :
URL :
PI Details : Sridharakumar Narasimhan , 044-22574177 , sridharkm@iitm.ac.in

IIT Madras
4

Project Title : IoT enabled patient monitoring system

Expected Outcome : Real time monitoring of patients with wireless probes, IoT thermometer etc. relaying information to dashboard at each floor/central dashboard. These could be deployed in repurposed facilities or existing hospital facilities.
Expected Timeline : Ready to deploy
Remarks :
URL :
PI Details : Sridharakumar Narasimhan , 044-22574177 , sridharkm@iitm.ac.in

IIT Madras
5

Project Title : Ubifly Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (The ePlane Company) https://www.theeplanecompany.com/ The ePlane Company is a deep tech startup that develops technology for aerial mobility. Started as a research project at IIT Madras in 2017 by Prof. Satya Chakravarthy, ePlane exerts its expertise in aerospace, additive manufacturing (3D printing), advanced materials, avionics and artificial intelligence through development of the most efficient heavy lifting UAVs enabling autonomous electric unmanned aerial logistics for the Armed Forces, Healthcare institutions, Logistics and eCommerce companies. ePlane counts CISF, Indian Air Force and HAL amongst its clients.

Expected Outcome : a. Deploy 4 drones (or more based on funding) for deliveries during COVID-19 b. Develop a product after successful deployment c. Certify product (drone) d. Conduct trials for medical supplies post COVID-19 and certification
Expected Timeline : 9 months
Remarks :
URL :
PI Details : Pranjal Mehta , 9940141982 , pranjal@eplane.ai

IIT Madras
6

Project Title : Day and night surveillance using UAVs

Expected Outcome : UAVs for police to do surveillance of selected areas in cities for detecting lock-down violations
Expected Timeline : Ready for deployment
Remarks : UAVs have been built by IIT Kanpur, in collaboration with VTOL Aviation India Ltd, under the UP Defense Corridor project that can be used for surveillance of an area of radius up to 15 km using high-resolution camera with night vision capabilities. The endurance of these UAVs ranges from 1.5 hours to 10 hours. These are ready for deployment and one is already in use by Kanpur city police.
URL :
PI Details : Dr. A.K. Ghosh , 0512 259 7716 , akg@iitk.ac.in

IIT Kanpur
7

Project Title : Travel Tracker

Expected Outcome : (a) An interactive mobile app or Web GUI for acquiring Citizen ID and Travel History (b) Construction of a backend database for storing travel histories (c) A fast algorithm for searching Top-K probably contaminated citizens with respect to a Query Citizen (d) Visualization of Database and Useful Citizen Connections
Expected Timeline :
Remarks :
URL :
PI Details : Dr. Prithwijit Guha, pguha@iitg.ac.in

IIT Guwahati
8

Project Title : 1. Tracking of any GPS based system be it vehicle, collar, mobile, etc. If the GPS is not working system will take the location from a mobile tower. It works with or without the internet (through SMS). The tracking can be continuous or can be obtained at any time by sending an SMS to the person. 2. The tracking is web-based and can be seen all/one simultaneously on desktop/mobile. 3. Alert will receive if a person goes out of the predefined quarantine area. 4. Other web-based system receive the geotagged selfies on the map. Selfie can of a person or place as per requirement. 5. The third system receives the geotagged video which after processing can be seen on the corresponding location on the map. 6. A third person registered on-site can see the path for safe passage. 7. Drone can provide the following services: a. Manual or automatic predefined area surveillance. b. Delivering medicine to a predefined destination. c. Geotagged video image to mark places of violation.

Expected Outcome : Tracking of people under quarantine.
Expected Timeline : Available immediately.
Remarks :
URL :
PI Details : Prof Kamal Jain , +91 9760026284 , kamal.jain@ce.iitr.ac.in

IIT Roorkee
9

Project Title : Development with design innovation on cost-effective Pulse Oximeters and thermal scanners.

Expected Outcome :
Expected Timeline :
Remarks :
URL :
PI Details : Dr. M. Sabarimalai Manikandan, msm@iitbbs.ac.in

IIT Bhubaneswar
10

Project Title : One of the major problem being faced by the law enforcement agencies is to identify the persons with whom a recently identified corona affected person has come within the last few weeks. These persons are potential spreaders and a quick identification of the most vulnerable ones as well as the prolific spreaders who are likely to play the most important role in the spreading process. While several applications would now be available in the market that can provide the mobility and contact information of the people using mobile phone based technologies like bluetooth. However, a major challenge would be to learn about the spreading behavior and identify the vulnerables and prolific spreaders from these mobile phone based data. The goal of this research is to develop techniques for using the contact and mobility information obtained through mobile devices to indentify the vulnerables and leaders. The contact information between the persons would be obtained through exchange of bluetooth beacons that would be used to create a large scale contact network. Several influence maximization techniques as well as propagation models would be explored to identify the prolific spreaders from the contact and mobility information obtained through these mobile devices. Although influence maximization has been extensively studied and several techniques exist that are applicable to different use case scenarios, however the goal of this research is to study and investigate these models and techniques for the Covid scenario when only mobile phone based data is available. The data that will be used for modeling and validation will be synthetically generated based on manual studies of different existing cases of covid patients and their observed spreading behavior.

Expected Outcome : O-1. Application that can be used by law enforcement agencies to identify persons who have come in contact with a recently identified covid patient. O-2. Study on the use of mobile phone data to learn spreading behavior. O-3. Techniques to identify vulnerables and prolific spreaders from the contact network obtained using the mobile phone data.
Expected Timeline : O-1: 0-3 months O-2: 3-9 months O-3: 6-18 months
Remarks :
URL :
PI Details : Joydeep Chandra , 0612-302 8129 , joydeep@iitp.ac.in

IIT Patna
11

Project Title : COVID-19 dashboard

Expected Outcome : As the current COVID-19 situation is evolving, it is getting clearer that while the pandemic is global, local factors such as population density, social interactions, testing, contact tracing and quarantining rates are largely governing the magnitude of the outbreak at the city scale. While the existing technologies provide national or regional scale predictions, we have to recognize that the “one-size-fits-all approach” will not work for Indian cities. Moreover, as cities prepare to open after current lockdowns, the recovery strategies have to account for social distancing, congestion-free transits and unusual traffic patterns the cities would witness with red and containment zones declared as a no-travel zone. Our dashboard, first of its kind for Indian cities, assesses the local risk factors to give a city-scale projection of COVID-19 incidence while accounting for various social distancing scenarios. In addition to the epidemiological data, it also disseminates information about potential congestion zones and rerouting under different containment scenarios to the stakeholders. While we have used the city of Ahmedabad as a use case (currently classified as Hotspot), our technology is scalable to all Indian cities.
Expected Timeline : Available in public domain
Remarks : The work has been completed
URL : http://covid19.iitgn.ac.in/
PI Details : Udit Bhatia

IIT Gandhinagar
12

Project Title : CoViDoc - A platform to connect patients with hospitals/doctors in contactless mode

Expected Outcome : To connect patients and doctors in a contactless manner
Expected Timeline : 5 Months
Remarks :
URL :
PI Details : Dr. Sumit Kalra, Assistant Professor & Mr. Kunal Tawatia, BTech. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Jodhpur; Dr. Kuldeep Singh, Dean Academics, AIIMS Jodhpur

IIT Jodhpur
13

Project Title : Scale up to scale COVID

Expected Outcome : Galvanize multiple existing biology labs into dispensing SARS-CoV-2 RT PCR tests
Expected Timeline : 12-18 months
Remarks :
URL :
PI Details : Dr. Sushmita Jha

IIT Jodhpur
14

Project Title : Experiments and lattice Boltzmann simulations of infectious virus transport in the air from humans

Expected Outcome : -
Expected Timeline : Project initiated
Remarks :
URL :
PI Details : Dr Shanmugam Dhinakaran, sdhina@iiti.ac.in

IIT Indore
15

Project Title : We aim to create a software tool that uses data received at the base stations from mobile phone users to predict user locations and count the number of users in a given area. This tool shall alert the enforcement agents whenever the density of people crosses a certain threshold. The mobile phone users will not be required to install any specialized application or transmit specific information (such as GPS information) for this purpose. The tool shall perform the sensing operation purely based on the data that is already transmitted by existing protocols in cellular networks to establish and maintain mobile links.

Expected Outcome : A software tool for law enforcement agents that indicates crowd locations.
Expected Timeline : 3 Months
Remarks :
URL :
PI Details : Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan T, lnt@iitpkd.ac.in

IIT Palakkad