Chung, J. "Will You Help Me"

Abstract

This thesis describes the design and development of a system that is aimed for enhancing safety and security using cellular phones. This system has two main components: a master phone application to assist people who need to take care of their loved ones, and a slave phone application to provide help to care-recipients who need attention from their caregivers. This system applies location awareness (GPS), awareness of social activities (communication activity and proximity with close peers,) and peer-to-peer data communication as its core technologies.

There are three sub-components that are implemented the system: First component is for providing a set of information in order to enhance awareness of crime around users' surrounding areas. This component is used to assess risk on users themselves as well as their property. The second component is a sub-system that is dedicated for detecting a possible abnormal transit behavior. Consequently, the system alerts this abnormality to both the system users and their caregivers. Third component detects nearby phone to cultivate social activities with the system user's peers. The purpose of finding contacts is to get remote help from friends of the care-recipients.

All the functions provided by the system fall into the gray area in between the state in which care-recipients are completely safe, and that in which care-recipients had an accident severe enough to require help from authorities.