Paul Yates, owner of Decades Arcade in Charlottesville, Va., used coronavirus downtime to get creative and make social distancing automatic at his location.
With his background in engineering, WTVR reports Yates made a way for his arcade machines to tell if someone is getting too close to another person. “I invented a little card-swipe device on each machine that will actually enforce social distancing,” he said. “The idea is that it has a proximity sensor and if somebody’s playing the machine next to you, you can’t start a game on the other machine.”
Each machine has a blinking red light that will automatically shut off a game if someone tries to play it.
With more than 100 games, the arcade reopened in mid-June. You can learn more about them at www.decadesarcade.com or on Facebook.