Flex Sensor Integrated Smart Strap to Verify Correct Wearing of the Face Mask

Face masks offer efficient, convenient, and affordable defense against infectious agents or airborne diseases, namely, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and many others. Various types of face masks have been developed for people in previous years. However, any of these face masks do not provide any effective means to provide feedback to users to wear them accurately. In this work, the authors present a sensorized adjustable strap for a face mask to ensure its accurate position on the face. This strap allows wearing a face mask comfortably without putting any pressure on the ears of a user. In this strap, a push button is interfaced with a microcontroller, which sets up a threshold value as per the orientation of the face mask on the user. The microcontroller is preprocessed with a protocol to evaluate and store the threshold values. In this work, the flex sensor is used to measure the amount of bending angle of a strap, wherein the microcontroller, on processing and comparing the analog value from the flex sensor with the set threshold value, generates a command in case the value recedes the threshold value. For real-time feedback, a vibrator is used to alert the user to wear the mask properly. The proposed work has provided an effective performance with an average accuracy of 95.25%. As we move toward a future where avoiding cross-infection is crucial and contactless experiences are preferred, the advancements in this field will greatly benefit society.