Pupil engineering idea, Tap of Germs, developed into a prototype by Thales
Introduction to the partnership
Thales are one of our National Partners for our annual engineering competition which asks pupils aged 3-19 ‘If you were an engineer what would you do?’ and encourages pupils come up with creative solutions to real-world problems.
There are 5 Thales teams from various sites around the UK who will each be working on one of the 5 pupil engineering ideas selected to develop into a prototype over the 2023/2024 academic year which will be unveiled at the Awards Ceremony and Public Exhibition during the Summer term.
Thales, Cheadle site selected Madiha’s idea because out of a huge pool of ideas, it stood out with its originality and functionality in solving an everyday problem. She mentioned in her notes that 97% of people don’t wash their hands properly, and the Cheadle team wanted to help her improve that statistic!
Beginning the prototype
Thales Cheadle project team is made up of Izzy (Project Planning & Controls Apprentice), Fiona (Engineering Graduate), Adam (Engineering Graduate), Olamide (Software Apprentice), Alicia (Software Apprentice) and Jack (Hardware Apprentice). They have a range of skillsets to approach the production of the prototype, and have a huge field of experienced engineers at Thales to consult.
Initially, they weren’t aware of the capabilities of UV light in detecting germs but discovered that they are limited unless the UV has a specific wavelength to excite a specific germ on the hands.
This posed a challenge in how we would adapt the idea to fulfil the UV element in Madiha’s design. The team explored a few different concepts, until they settled on creating a prototype that uses image recognition software to track the hand-washing process, capturing movements and letting the user know when they are done. Many people simply don’t know how to wash their hands properly, so they wanted to come up with a solution that would allow them to follow the correct process as they wash.
The UV light comes in as the next layer of defence, because paired with a gel-like substance that the user applies before washing their hands, it shows up the areas that haven’t been washed properly, as seen in the below images.
This is the current design iteration, with software development for the image recognition and sink display underway, moving onto procuring the hardware soon.
We can’t wait for the next update on this design!