Why wasn’t it called “physical distancing” rather than “social distancing”? We can be social across six feet of space. We can yell, we can hold up cue cards, we can semaphore a whole conversation on the news of the day. And to help us know just how far apart we happen to be, we could use this project from CatMan via hackster:
When I first learned about the VL53L1x distance sensor, I immediately thought that this is something that could be useful: it’s a distance sensor, with a relatively narrow beam, not affected by sounds (and not using ultrasounds that might affect the guide dogs). Unfortunately, it doesn’t work well outdoors because it uses light so a bright day would make it useless, but I think there are enough indoors situations where one might find it useful: to find a doorway, to avoid obstacles that are not on the ground (the cane does that), to find something on a table, etc.
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I designed a device that can be worn on the wrist, so it can be easily pointed to the direction of interest. In fact, the device is fast enough that, by moving/rotating the wrist, it can easily “scan” the environment, such that the user can immediately know which way objects are, and how far, within the scanned area.