Exploring Practical Implementation of Touchless Access Control Using iBeacons in Norwegian Hospitals

One of the leading causes of infections and cross contaminations in hospitals is surface contact. Much is done in form of routine and design to limit pathogen transmission through surfaces, however laps in routine and new technology make room for improvement. By removing some of the key touchpoints hospital employees interact with, one might be able to decrease cross contamination. This thesis explore the practical implementation of touchless access control in a hospital environment using beacon technology. The basis for the research is an ethnographic study adapted for HCI resulting in three use cases. A prototype consisting of three Estimote Bluetooth low energy beacons/transmitters; one Android smartphone receiver; a cloud based API and one Raspberry Pi 3 mini computer is used to triangulate the smartphones position in a virtual grid to assess if a door should be opened by the Raspberry. Measurements show the selected beacons and their Software Developer Kit (SDK) to vary too much in the radio frequency/RSSI signal strength to accurately report distance making triangulation of position inaccurate. Although inaccurate, the signal strength is shown to be consistent and significantly different within 5 sets of 100 measurements at different distances, enabling further projects to improve on the design by making a classification model. The thesis concludes that although RSSI signal strength and the provided SDK alone is not sufficiently accurate for positioning the suggested classification model should be able to give an accurate positioning in 2D space. However regardless how the beacons are used the design must follow universal design principles like affordance, boundaries and cuing and respond within 500ms to be perceived as instantaneous and functional for an end user.