eXpress! Help - 2nd place @ CSIDC 2004

Project name: eXpress! Help
Contest: CSIDC 2004
Award: 2nd
Team: Andrei Hagiescu, Marian Mihailescu, Cristina Toma
Mentor: Nicolae Tapus, Vlad Panait

(raport)

In the news:

Euractiv






Abstract:

The reason people have organized themselves into communities is to help each other. Special services are in charge of providing safety and security but sometimes their effort is wasted on events handled more efficiently by the family or by the community itself. Unfortunately, it is difficult for some people to ask for help when they have a problem: you may think of children, elder relatives or people with disabilities (called DEARS in this report). A solution for them is provided by eXpress! Help (X!Help), a system that combines an improved method for demanding help with the de facto community membership.

In the past ten years, mobile technology has evolved and now provides enhanced services. Enforced with today’s achievements, mobile phones do more than sending your voice over the network. Transformed into powerful computers, they are suited to run X!Help. Its aim is to make the world a safer place by adding a more efficient and faster method for helping the weak members of the communities.

The whole system represents an enhancement for the emergency services and not a replacement. Using a 911 emergency call in a classical way, it may be a challenge for a DEAR to specify his exact location. It takes time to explain the nature of his problem and even more time until someone actually arrives to provide help. X!Help can notify the family and the emergency services and simultaneously ask for help from those around, being able to lead them to the DEAR in need. The process of locating/asking for help will become more intuitive and efficient.

X!Help adds to the users’ mobile phones localization capabilities (provided by the network or from an attached GPS) and a peer-to-peer low-range communication system (using a Bluetooth module). A packet of services is developed to be used with these new capabilities. It includes data transfer, route recording, pathfinder, watch area, vocal guidance and restricted remote access to position information.

By allowing a help message to be diffused to those around, an alternative is provided to the time-consuming stages in emergency call situations because it allows more people from the neighborhood to know about an incident and it provides means for a faster and more efficient intervention.

Whether assistance is offered by specialized services or by those around, the caller’s phone is able to provide the user’s coordinates and, with a differential representation of locations (on a map), guidance is provided for those offering help.

X!Help is a distributed modular system; it is scalable, inexpensive (as an add-on for existing mobile phones) and intended to be used for a large range of scenarios. Need for help is unpredictable, but think of people with memory problems1, a weakened old man in difficulty or a child lost on the streets2. In such cases X!Help proves to be a valuable asset.