Yep, there’s now a wearable social distancing monitor – meet Safe Spacer

With restrictions easing around Australia, and the world, it’s important to still maintain social distancing. To help people be aware of social distancing while at work, Italian company IK Multimedia has launched Safe Spacer, a lightweight wearable device that is designed to help workers and visitors to a work place maintain safe social distancing.

The Safe Spacer can be worn on the wrist, or on a lanyard or keychain. Safe Spacer can alert you using a choice of vibrations, lights and sound alerting you when another Safe Spacer user has entered a 6ft/2m radius around you.

The device uses Ultra-wideband (UWB) tech, a wireless protocol designed to transmit a lot of data over a short distance without using too much power, but can also maintain location information down to 10cm opposed to 1m on wireless standards like Bluetooth. It also allows the Safe Spacer to offer battery life up to one week.

Safe Spacer can be removed from it’s band, and the unit is waterproof making it easy to re-use for multiple people.

It’s a wearable, so of course there’s going to be an app, the app doesn’t appear to be live right now, but will be presumably available for iOS and Android. According to their site, the app will let you ‘easily synch and associate units with wearers, customize alert distances and settings, monitor and trace accidental contacts, and more.’

It’s not a bad idea for workplaces, and if this is something you like the look of then IK Multimedia is offering the Safe Spacer for pre-order now for €99.99, with volume discounts available. The Safe Spacer will reportedly ship in Q3 this year. If you, or your workplace is interested you can check out the website now.