I-Corps: Child Tracking and Detection - A Public Safety Application Through Mobile Crowd-Sensing

University Of Missouri-Kansas City, Columbia MO

Investigators

Abstract

Based on principles of Mobile Crowd-Sensing, this project implements a Public Safety application for tracking children. Child protection is a critical global public safety issue. Keeping track of young children is often a daunting task for parents. The responsibility is especially challenging for parents with special-needs children. One social effort to track missing children, the AMBER Alert Program, focuses on galvanizing an entire community to assist in the search for and safe recovery of missing children. While the AMBER Alert Program's coverage of social monitoring has significantly broadened in recent years, including phone messaging and online social media, successful recoveries are often far too slow, the success rate is very low, and the process is costly. This team's technology automates aspects of AMBER Alert and radically improves the effectiveness through innovative wireless and cloud technologies. This project effectively and efficiently utilizes crowds to protect children using technology that provides a faster, better, and less expensive solution. The project involves WiFi tags for children and smartphone apps for parents, caregivers and volunteers. This team prototyped the technology with all of the components of a child tag prototype plus the smartphone app with parent mode, caregiver mode, and a volunteer mode. In addition to the main focus, child protection, the team will explore other markets of the proposed innovation such as pet owners, amusement parks, malls, educational institutions, retail, and hospitals. In addition to direct manufacturing and distribution, the team is open to licensing the proposed technology to other location tracking device makers.