Credit: Robert Triggs / Android Authority
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- Researchers have developed a virtual virus that is transmitted between phones via Bluetooth.
- It meets social distancing guidelines in the same way as the current COVID virus.
- The technology will be used to more accurately assess the spread of COVID-19.
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In a collaborative effort, researchers at the University of Queensland, the University of Melbourne and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a ‘virtual virus’ that can be transmitted between phones to mimic the spread of COVID -19.
Called Safe Blues strands, virus-like virtual tokens circulate and replicate between mobile devices using Bluetooth. They are also designed to meet social distancing guidelines in the same way as the virus itself.
So how does it work?
According to the research paper published in the Model log, virtual stands vary in their viral properties, such as incubation times and infectivity levels.
They are counted as active for a limited time on each “infected” phone. Meanwhile, if the device is in close proximity to another device, there is a chance that the strand will spread to the neighboring device.
Likewise, if the phone is isolated, the strand is unlikely to spread.
This bluetooth-transmitted virtual virus could potentially help more accurately assess the transmission of COVID-19. The research paper notes that unlike biological epidemics, the number of devices infected by each strand can be measured in real time.
“Safe Blues offers a solution for real-time population-level estimates of an outbreak’s response to government guidelines and projections for the near future,” the document states.
The researchers also developed an Android app for a planned campus experiment to test the protocols and techniques of the program. They say the technology can be used to train sophisticated machine learning models to estimate current and future SARS-CoV-2 infection numbers.
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