PFI-TT: Crowd-based Alert and Detection Service to Increase the Safety of People with Special Needs

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to effectively address the safety of people with special needs. People with age-related or cognitive disabilities often find it hard to express themselves. They are not fully aware of their need for assistance when lost or wandering. Keeping track of people with special needs can be a daunting task for a caregiver and can lead to isolation, which significantly deteriorates their quality of life. While several assistive commercial devices are available to locate people with special needs, they have not yet been widely adopted due to various social and technical challenges. This PFI project develop a technology to address the challenges faced by existing solutions, including usability, privacy, deployability, and effectiveness. The proposed project will develop an intelligent, integrated system for people with special needs that includes multiple safety features, including preventive sentiment analysis, safe-zoning, and safe-tracking. It also enhances privacy protection, and reliability by leveraging the power of crowd sourcing in zoning and tracking. The project includes the development of the following components: i) an intelligent tag system, ii) software-based safety services, iii) beacon stuffing technologies, and iv) a privacy-aware tracking service. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.