As facial masks become the norm in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic, Japanese startup Donut Robotics has developed an “intelligent mask” connected to the Internet that can transmit messages and translate from Japanese into eight other languages.
The white plastic “c-mask” adapts to standard face masks and connects via Bluetooth to a smartphone and an application tablet which can transcribe speech into SMS, make calls or amplify the voice of the mask user.
“We have worked hard for years to develop a robot and have used this technology to create a product that responds to the way the coronavirus has reshaped society,” said Taisuke Ono, CEO of Donut Robotics.
The company’s engineers came up with the idea for the mask while they were looking for a product that would help them survive the pandemic. When the coronavirus first appeared, Donut Robotics had just won a contract to supply robotic guides and translators at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, a product whose future is uncertain after the collapse of air travel.
The first 5,000 masks will be sent to buyers in Japan from September, and Ono will also be looking to sell in China, the United States and Europe. “There has been a lot of interest,” he said.
At around $ 40 per mask, Donut Robotics is targeting a mass market that did not exist a few months ago. One of the goals, they said, is to generate revenue from subscriber services offered through an app that users will download.
Donut Robotics built a connected mask prototype in one month by adapting the translation software developed for his robot and a mask design that one of the company’s engineers, Shunsuke Fujibayashi, created four years ago for a project student aiming to interpret speech by mapping facial muscles.
Ono raised 28 million yen ($ 260,000) for development by selling shares of Donut Robotics through the Japanese crowd funding site Fundinno. “We raised our original target of 7 million yen in three minutes and stopped after 37 minutes when we reached 28 million yen,” he said.
In May, a group of researchers from Harvard University and MIT presented the design of a mask capable of producing a fluorescent signal when a person with coronavirus breathes, coughs or sneezes. This tool would allow an almost instantaneous and rapid diagnosis, which could be useful in the context of a pandemic.
This development, which is still in its infancy, is part of an earlier project that researcher Jim Collins started in the bioengineering laboratory of MIT in 2014. At that time, he and his team began to develop sensors capable of detecting the Ebola virus on paper. Two years later, researchers from this university and Harvard published their research explaining the use of this technology to apply it to the Zika virus.
This technology is capable of identifying the viruses that cause SARS, measles, flu, hepatitis C and other diseases. The objective is now to bring this technology to produce a mask which, from this same concept, is capable of identifying COVID-19, as mentioned in an article by Business Insider.
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