# Automated Contact Tracing for Large Business Using Indoor Location Technology

> **NIH ALLCDC R43** · APPLIED UNIVERSAL DYNAMICS CORPORATION · 2021 · $243,350

## Abstract

Abstract
 Large businesses need an efficient, accurate and scalable method to perform contact tracing of staff and
visitors that occur within their building during an epidemic. The manpower needed to conduct traditional
contact tracing may make it unaffordable for a building with a large number of people. This project will
develop an automated system to generate contact tracing reports. Wireless indoor location technology based
on Ultra-Wideband (UWB) wearable tags (e.g. badges) will be used. Within the building all staff and visitors
will be issued the UWB transmitting tags to identify them and allow tracking of their movements within the
building. The business will need to inform the staff and visitors about the contact tracing and obtain their
consent for them to have access to the building. A time history of everyone's position in the building will be
maintained by the business. This data will not be accessible from outside the business building and will be
strictly access controlled inside the building. Contact trace reports will be computed using this data if an
individual is identified as having a contagious disease such as COVID-19. An authorized business official will
be able to search the time history data over a specified time for close contacts the infected person had with
others inside the building. The search will allow specifying for contact time, contact distance and the time
period. The output will be a list of individuals who had contact with the infected person based on the search
criteria. By knowing the names of the persons that had close contact with an infected person, the business
can follow the established protocol they have chosen for contact tracing. This phase I SBIR project will
conduct feasibility testing of this system. Prototype wearable UWB tags will be developed. Prototype software
will be developed to collect, compute and search the position time history of an individual. Performance
evaluation of the system will be conducted in a simulated environment to test feasibility and measure
success.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10323871
- **Project number:** 1R43OH012291-01
- **Recipient organization:** APPLIED UNIVERSAL DYNAMICS CORPORATION
- **Principal Investigator:** PAUL GIBSON
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** ALLCDC
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $243,350
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-01 → 2022-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10323871

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10323871, Automated Contact Tracing for Large Business Using Indoor Location Technology (1R43OH012291-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10323871. Licensed CC0.

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