Smart homes that detect sneeze, cough, and face touching.

Coughing, sneezing, and face touching activities are three primary ways of spreading disease. With the onset of COVID-19 it is paramount to monitor these activities at home and practice good hygiene. To help stop the spread of disease, we have developed a wireless sensing system capable of detecting voluntary coughs, sneezes, and face touching with alert based notifications sent to a mobile application. Our system uses radio frequency technology to capture motion, speed, direction, and range information from human activities. It does this by using a combination of a continuous wave Doppler and frequency modulated continuous wave radar. By observing a set of features related to the sensed motion, we designed a set of fuzzy logic IF-THEN rules that can differentiate each activity from each other with an overall accuracy of 96%. In addition, our system enables smart homes to detect and localize these activities at different distances up to 2.74 m, through walls, and with multiple people. We envision our system helping not only with prevention of COVID-19, but supporting contact tracing efforts by monitoring people's activities at home.