Portable Device Safety System Using Camera and Sensor Alerts
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
The widespread use of wireless, portable, and handheld devices for activities like texting, emailing, and gaming while walking or moving poses a significant hazard due to distractions, leading to collisions with objects or individuals.
Innovation Solution
A wireless, portable, and handheld device equipped with safety features, including a camera system for providing a view of the surroundings, collision avoidance sensors to detect objects, and an alert system to notify users of potential collisions, while allowing for hands-free operation through voice commands.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If users engage in activities like texting, emailing, and gaming while walking or moving, then productivity and ease of operation are improved, but the risk of collisions with objects or individuals increases
Solution Approach 1:
The camera system captures images of the surroundings before the user potentially collides with objects, and the processor analyzes these images to identify hazards in advance, allowing the alert system to notify users before collisions occur
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously captures images, analyzes them for hazards, and provides real-time visual and audible feedback to the user about potential collisions, creating a closed-loop safety system that responds to environmental conditions
2Ease of operation
If users focus on device activities while moving, then ease of operation is improved, but safety and awareness of surroundings deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The camera system acts as an intermediary between the user and the physical environment, capturing and transmitting visual information about hazards that the user would otherwise miss due to device focus, thereby maintaining safety awareness without requiring direct user attention to surroundings
3Reliability
If alert systems provide continuous visual and auditory notifications, then collision avoidance effectiveness is improved, but device complexity and energy consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The alert system provides notifications selectively based on hazard detection rather than continuous alerts, using partial action (alerts only when needed) to maintain effectiveness while reducing unnecessary complexity and energy consumption from constant operation
Data Source
AI summary
An apparatus, including a controller, camera, display, speaker, global positioning system, and sensor or detector which senses or detects a dangerous, hazardous, or unsafe, condition at or in a vicinity of the apparatus. The sensor or detector senses or detects the dangerous, hazardous, or unsafe, condition, and the apparatus provides, via the speaker, an audible alarm, siren blare, or verbal message, containing information regarding the dangerous, hazardous, or unsafe, condition. The apparatus or the controller generates an alert message containing information regarding the dangerous, hazardous, or unsafe, condition. The apparatus transmits the alert message to a central processing computer, to a communication device of a parent, relative, or friend, or other authorized individual, or to a police or law enforcement communication device.