Navrachana Students, teachers develop app that ensures zero physical contact at entry point

Realising the importance of social distancing despite the number of COVID-19 cases in Gujarat has gone down drastically and life is getting back to normal and possibilities of third wave, five students from the Navrachana University, Vadodara have developed a mobile application that ensures touch free access to the campus.

The students from third and fourth year of B. Tech program who resumed the physical classes after a gap of close to almost two years realised that the students had to show the consent letter at the entry gate of the university. The security officials who would want to check the letter were holding it in their hands and that prompted the students to take it up as a challenge.

"As soon as we noticed that there was a bit of physical contact while the students were entering into the campus, we decided to eliminate all the possibilities of physical contact. We had a meeting with the Program Chair of School of Engineering and Technology and in the same meeting we even decided to involve students in this project. And in less than a fortnight we came up with a mobile application that has solved this major problem," said Dr Sandeep Vasant, Registrar Navrachana University.

Computer Science Engineering Program Chair Yogesh Chaudhari said, "We had a look at the entry of the students in the morning hours and we realised that the security officials had no option but to check the required documents holding it in their hands. Though the situation is improving as far as COVID-19 cases are concerned, we cannot ignore the health and safety of our students and that was the reason we took it up on a war footing."

A team of students from the third and fourth year of B. Tech Program comprising Darsh Shah, Hitarth Solanki, Shubh Utekar, Pruthvi Patel was formed and it was supervised by Assistant Professor Vaibhavi Patel and Professor Chaudhari literally burnt the midnight oil to make the application that ensures zero contact access.

"It has been developed in a manner that all the required documents related to students who have opted for physical classes are uploaded and when the student comes to the college, he or she just has to scan the QR Code available at the entry gate of the university," explained Darsh Shah one of the students who developed the app.

Another student, Pruthvi Patel said, "The app is completely user friendly and in just five steps, a student would be able to gain access to the university without wasting time in physical verification of documents. This will also result in negligible administrative efforts which in case of physical verification of students documents would have been much more."