Technical Design of a Fever-Screening and Proximity-Alert Device for Warehouse Staff

Design the architecture for a hardware device used in warehouses during the COVID-19 pandemic. The device should check employees' body temperature and measure how far apart employees are, so it can tell when they are not keeping a safe distance from one another. ```hint Sense, decide, report For each signal, ask where it can be measured reliably on a busy floor full of metal shelving and moving workers. Then separate what has to happen on the device in real time from what a backend can do later. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the main purpose to warn workers in the moment, to support contact tracing after someone tests positive, or both? - Must one device sense both temperature and distance, or can the design include fixed equipment such as stations at the entrance? - Should the system know where workers are on the floor, or only how close they are to each other? - What may the data be used for, and who is allowed to see results tied to a named employee? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A sensor choice for each signal, with its accuracy limits on a working body and among metal racks - The split between on-device alerting and backend processing, shaped by battery life, connectivity and data volume - The data flow and data model from device to site to cloud, including how close-contact records support contact tracing - Privacy, consent, access control and retention for health and proximity data, and how the design earns worker trust - Failure modes (dead or unworn devices, network outages, false alerts), operations such as charging and cleaning, and the metrics that show the system works ### Follow-up Questions - An employee tests positive. Walk through exactly how the system finds the coworkers who need to be notified. - How would the design change if many workers refused to wear a device? - How would you take this from a pilot in one warehouse to hundreds of sites, and what would you watch during the rollout?