App a ‘game-changer’ for safety
Two students at the University of Bath are hoping to improve women’s safety with a new smartwatch app.
The idea came to E-J Roodt, a business student at the university’s School of Management, while she was jogging in a badly lit park and was worrying about the risk of an attack.
Ms Roodt, a keen smartwatch user, was aware of the advancements in wearable technology and how it was being used to detect heart attacks.
She took her idea to Maks Rahman, an engineering student who had just returned from a year at medical research organisation Fraunhofer IPA – and together they co-founded Epowar.
The Epowar app monitors a wearer’s heart rate and body motion to sense distress, automatically sending an emergency alert. It is currently being trialled at the University of Bath.
The innovative smartwatch app uses AI to instantly recognise distress in a user’s activity – responding immediately if a user is attacked when walking or running alone.
In the event of an attack, the smartwatch app senses distress, sends an alert to the wearer’s contacts, sets off a loud alarm, and records evidence that will be stored immediately in a cloud system.
The Epowar team have assembled a number of volunteers who will simulate a physical attack, as part of the trials, to fine-tune the software.
“After months of research and experiment, we were fascinated to find that people’s responses to distress were remarkably consistent and that this could be reliably captured and interpreted using AI,” said Ms Roodt.
“We have now reached the development stage where in-field testing can start and are confident we are close to creating a finished product.”
The app’s Ai-powered system was built on extensive research into detectable responses to physical distress and an analysis of thousands of samples of physiological and motion data, according to the duo, who said the AI models can distinguish between physical and psychological stress.
Ms Roodt said: “It occurred to us that a smartwatch with this app may be a way to alert others if a woman is restrained or struggling.
“The key is that it would all happen automatically and an assailant would have little or no time to prevent this – which is not always possible with conventional panic buttons, rape alarms or your mobile phone.”
The business student said she was keen to avoid the privacy issues that have clouded other security apps, which may include tracking the user.
Epowar’s software does not track or identify the wearer, up to the point where an alert is issued. A user could choose to run the app permanently or switch it on for specific journeys. The data collected would be used to fine-tune the app but would be anonymised, she said.
“We are keen to find ways to make this as affordable and accessible to as many women as possible and could envisage a system where organisations, such as schools or universities, make available such software to groups for example,” she added.
“We hope people will recognise the ability to automatically alert contacts as a game-changer in a world where such software seems increasingly necessary.”