ProtecViz : a do it yourself protection visor

© Inria - Laurence Boissieux

With the development of the Covid-19 pandemic and the droplet mode of contamination, the need for individual protection for caregivers was quickly expressed through the media. In addition to masks, it became essential to provide visors for eye protection, which provided a gateway for the virus to enter.

Many initiatives have emerged in the Fablabs community, based mainly on 3D wireframe printing. Printing a support takes more than an hour, so the idea came up to use laser cutting, a much faster technique. For this, a prototype was designed in CAD, taking into account ergonomic needs (comfort, ventilation, sufficient space for glasses, stability on the forehead) and optimized in terms of material consumption. Then this prototype was handcrafted with the means available at home: cardboard, a shoelace, a plastic document cover and a few pieces of tape. Several questions then arose: how to make a "real" prototype, validate it, then produce and distribute it? 

In the context of containment, it was quite complex to access the cutting machine at the Montbonnot site, which was also mobilized by another project, Recovid. Thanks to Elise Taillant, from the Transfer for Innovation and Partnership Department of the Inria Grenoble Rhône-Alpes centre, I was able to get in touch with other carriers and coordinators at the Grenoble level (CHU, CEA). As ten or so systems were already being tested, the decision was taken to focus on the craft version and to distribute it in the form of a tutorial for the general public, in order to target professions in contact with the public (shopkeepers, postal workers, delivery drivers, etc.). With the help of the centre's legal expert, Marie Lorphelin, a web page has been drafted for this purpose, which has been put on line and shared on the Covid-19 initiative inventory site.

The templates for the cutting version have nevertheless been sent to the ISite in Lille.