Wearable Personal-Space Alert

A wearable device that will alert you when-ever a person is approaching you, so you can then look around and take action if required.

Mick Dundee

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Description

A seventeen year old girl was recently stabbed to death while walking through a local park one afternoon. The girl was unaware of the stranger creeping up on her because she had headphones on with music playing from her phone. This made me think how this may have been prevented and her life saved.

Now imagine if while she was walking along as before, her phone alerted her that someone had entered her 30ft personal space and the direction is behind her. She looks around, and see's the attacker closing in. She screams and runs to safety. The attacker panics and runs in the other direction.

Details

This project is in the very early stages and I think I will need help to determine the engineering required for this to grow from an idea to something that may one day help save a life.

Discussions

C Stone wrote 05/17/2015 at 16:05

Sensors that pick up movement and alert you to danger in your immediate vicinity, I think I've seen these before, they are called ears, evolved over thousands of years exactly for this purpose. Take the damn earplugs out while walking alone, and on railroad tracks. Replacing intelligence with technology in this case will just get more people killed.

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davedarko wrote 05/19/2015 at 23:03

You can't always think of something bad - you have to be able to walk down a dark road without fear and suspicion. With technology getting cheaper everyday - why don't we try to prevent shit from happening? There was a murder recently in the district where I'm from - an 18 y/o girl in a dark alley. You have to wonder how things could have been prevented. Sure, she could have listened to the streets and immediately call her parents for help / collecting her. But humans don't think of everything, especially in a stressful situation.

I don't see how this would replace intelligence, as this would probably only remind people to be careful. OTOH - it will be hard to tell the difference if it is actually okay that people are in your personal space. Sneaking up is one thing, but having people around in everyday situations is something you don't want to be alerted to. So without addressing this, it will probably turn out as a "turn on when alone" device - and you would have to think of it.

@Dr Croc Dundee You'd need something that notices a direct collision course - so tracking of objects and their movements, maybe take some pictures once in a while and upload them / notify cell phone when something suspicious is going on. Maybe a kinect to start with? It's a good project in itself, possible and may it not be a solution to make them aware to be vigilant, it's a good prototype/concept for keychains/caps/wearables in 2035. Maybe it inspires someone else to make it smaller or write better algorithms... who knows. Eyes in the back, that's useful.

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