The day Zachary Caplin ’19 was caught in a company layoff at work, was the same day his father inspired him to design a temperature screening kiosk to help stop the spread of coronavirus.
“Like many others, my family experienced personal loss related to Covid-19; this drove me to try and design something that would make a positive impact on the pandemic. As a mechanical engineer, I dove right into the design of a temperature screening kiosk. Together with my brother [an electrical engineering student at RIT], we designed the CAPSCANN Temperature Screening Kiosk. We diligently designed and collaborated, communicated with industry heads, sourced parts, and connected with a breadth of companies to ensure we brought to market an effective, efficient, and affordable product.”
The patent pending kiosk is a temperature scanner that protects the health security of host buildings, by screening building entrants prior to allowing building admittance. Paired with a questionnaire phone app that produces a Quick Response (QR) code on the users’ phone, the screening kiosk reads the QR code and takes the users’ temperature within 0.2 seconds.
Each kiosk has facial recognition capabilities, can monitor building population movement, can be tied to pre-existing security features like two way communication systems and Radio Frequency Identification Door (RFID) locking doors, and can share data with health service operations, triggering alerts for individuals to see a physician.
“I learned a lot from WPI, especially with the robust CAD software programs and manufacturing and design classes. I learned to not be afraid of redesigning a current solution, how to really think about the end user experience, and how to best suit their wants and needs. I owe WPI a great deal of gratitude; I would never have been able to develop this product without my WPI education and hands-on experience.”
Zachary Caplin ‘19
Mechanical Engineer