MADISON, Wis. --  These days temperature checks are now part of the new normal.

So UW-Madison's Granger Engineering Design Innovation Lab recently came up with an inexpensive and simple way to do just that.

"The need really came from the dorms here on campus, some of the dorms are requiring that students self report their temperature," the lab's director, Lennon Rogers said.  "These will be put in certain dorms on certain floors in areas where students know they can go," he added.

Rogers hopes the contactless thermometer is an inexpensive and simple solution.  

"We actually took an existing commercial handheld forehead thermometer, we took the insides out,"  he said.   Rogers and a grad student then added a screen, a sensor and some open source coding for the 'On Wisconsin' idea.

"So, the thought was that if we had a hands-free approach, then there wouldn't need to be any cleaning of anything that was touched with people's hands, and they [the people] wouldn't have to go anywhere,"  he said.

The goal is to have these available at educational settings everywhere one day.

"They could be used for schools where you'd like a better sense of what the health is," he said.  "You could have students stop at this kiosk on their way in, to take just a second," he added.

The hands-free thermometer may one day boast a camera, too.  

"A camera could take images and do analysis on the face to look for changes in color," he said.

Because the engineering mind believes no matter what the reading, "if it catches one, it's, it's useful,"

The hands-free forehead thermometer expected to run around $100.