Extended Problem Statement and Requirements
Specification
Child Safety Device
Group # 18
Reem Al alshikh
Jacob Sutton
Zainab Alamri
Instructor:
Yenumula V Reddy
Sponsor:
Dr. Yanfang
1. Introduction:
The child safety device project will involve writing software for a server and a
smartphone application. The software will aim at exploring the child’s day-to-day
movements. When the child, for example, strays from his usual route on his way from
school, the server will send requests to the smart watch through an SMS gateway, which
will respond with a GPS data point. By analyzing this information, the server will use data
analytic techniques to categories those data points as safe or non-safe places for children.
The parent will then receive a notification from the smartphone application on the specific
danger, and the exact position where the child is. With such innovation, the parent will
need not worry when at work of their children where about.
2. Extended Problem Statement:
1. Needs
Children safety is one of the most important things that parents and the whole
community observe because children are a country’s most precious resource (Calman and
Tarr-Whelan 4). However, children can be sometimes in dangerous zone when leaving
home to school or in vice versa. Such incidences are common after school, when on
vacation, when in crowded places, and in amusement parks. When children wander off to
a dangerous place or route, the parents will receive an automated notification telling them
that their child is in dangerous situation. The search can be traumatizing to the parents but
by using the child tracking application, it will be a lot easier. This project therefore sorts to
provide a solution by developing software for parents to track their children with a GPS
and SMS capable smart watch.
2. Objectives
Our project will not entail any hardware design, as we will be using an
existing smart watch. Rather, we will be implementing this idea with software. The
smart watch will be capable of receiving an SMS message, getting its location, and
sending its coordinates, along with the time, in an SMS message. We will create a
server application, which will collect tracking data by communicating with the watch
through an SMS gateway and will analyze this data in order to learn the safe zones
and safe routes and notice when they are violated.
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We will also be writing a smartphone application. Tracking information and
notifications will be sent from the server application to the smartphone over the
Internet. This application will be able to plot tracking points on a map and notify the
parent when the child strays from usual patterns. We will focus on the Android
platform for this application, but we may pursue others depending on how the
project progresses, possibly including a web interface.
Here are a few considerations relevant to the design of our system:
Accuracy:
Our server application should be able to distinguish a diversion from established
patterns significant enough to be worth concern from a parent from an unimportant
variation. By choosing effective algorithms for analysis and adjusting constants used
for these algorithms, we can control the balance between false negatives and false
positives, testing against tracking data collected from our own movements.
Security:
The tracking data is, of course, private information, so security measures should
be taken to ensure that it is not readily accessible to anyone except for the parents.
Battery Life:
GPS tracking consumes battery power quickly, so attaining a favorable battery
life for the smart watch could be a challenge. To reduce battery consumption, GPS
tracking will only be done intermittently rather than staying on constantly. Taking
GPS points will be triggered by an SMS message from the server application. There
will be a tradeoff between battery life and precision of the tracking data based on
the frequency with which tracking points are taken. This frequency can be adjusted
in the server software so as to attain the maximum frequency possible while
maintaining a satisfactory battery life – perhaps something around 12-24 hours.
The frequency need not be constant. In some situations, such as when the child has
been stationary for a long time, the tracking frequency may be reduced, while at
other times it may be increased. Given sufficient time, we may also implement cell
tower based position tracking, which uses less energy than GPS tracking.
Ease of Use:
The smartphone application should be designed so that its use is clear and
intuitive. Tracking points and other relevant information should be displayed clearly
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on a map. Notifications should be effective in getting the users attention and
communicating the nature of a potential danger. These factors may be ranked in the
order they are here listed. Accuracy is most important because without it, our work
would offer no benefit over what already exists. Security is also quite important, as
open access to the tracking data would constitute a substantial loss of privacy. The
parents and children are the stakeholders to which these considerations apply. A
company selling this product and those with which it competes would be the only
other notable stakeholders.
3. Background
To a parent, not knowing where a child is can be a very unsettling experience,
but one cannot accompany their children at all times. Eventually, it is necessary to
grant a child the autonomy to travel alone – for instance, letting them walk home
from school or play outside. But what if the child wanders into a dangerous area?
What if he or she gets lost? What if the child is abducted? These uncertainties can
make a walk home from school a stressful experience for a parent.
With our project, we intend to mitigate the dangers of traveling
unaccompanied so that a child can have the independence to travel alone without
leaving parents worrying that their child is in danger. The solution lies in GPS
tracking. By wearing a GPS capable smart watch, a child can be tracked by a parent
while traveling alone, allowing parents to keep their peace of mind without keeping
their children under constant supervision. The watch can communicate with a server
through SMS and the location of the watch can be displayed on a web or smartphone
application.
Tracking children with GPS is not a new idea. Many such products are
available already. For example, Wherify Wireless had developed such a tracking
watch as early as 2001 (Conabree). To constantly monitor a tracker, though, is
cumbersome. Used in a naive fashion, a parent would have to constantly pay
attention to the child's location in order for it to be effective. The next step, then, is to
add software to automate this monitoring. An application could allow parents to
define safe or unsafe areas and notify them when the child is in an unsafe place.
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This, however, has also already been done. The hereO watch, for example,
does just this (hereOFamily.com). A parent can create virtual fences and be notified
when a child passes through them. The innovation our project will add is the ability
for the software to learn about a child's usual travel patterns on its own. By analyzing
tracking history, our software will establish safe zones and safe routes. Then, when
the child strays from these patterns, a notification will be triggered on the parent's
smartphone.
4. Stakeholder’s Goals
Not only one stakeholder for this project but there are a lot of stakeholders. First,
the major stakeholders are the children and parents who they will not be worry about their
children because they can detect exactly where they are. The second stakeholder is the
entire community because when the children will be safe, this will have a positive impact
in the community. Third stakeholders are the developers of the device who aims to
develop the device with the best quality. Furthermore, the forth stakeholder are the service
provider that they will give the developers a guaranteed and capable services to complete
the device.
5. Conclusion
The goal is to design an application on the smartphones that can alert the
parents if their children are in danger. This will require designing a smart watch that
has a tracking system on it. The tracking system will know the safe regions, safe
routes and the life pattern of the children. The objective of this design is to protect
the children whenever they are out of reach from their parents and guardians. The
design of the project will be as simple as possible.
3. Requirements Specifications:
1. Functional Requirements
1. Positioning
The smart watch must be able to determine its location.
2. Smart Watch Communication
The server must be able to send a message to the smart watch requesting its
position and the watch must be able to respond.
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3. Smart Phone Communication
The server must be able to communicate with the smartphone application.
4. Pattern Learning
The server must establish safe zones and safe routes based on location history.
5. Notification
The smartphone application must notify the user when the smart watch strays from
established patterns.
6. Movement Mapping
The smartphone application must be able to display a map plotting past locations of
the smart watch.
7. Synchronization
A user must be able to establish an association between a smart watch and an
instance of the smartphone application. This will be a many-to-many relation, i.e. a
smart watch may be tracked by multiple instances of the smartphone application,
and the smartphone application may track multiple smart watches.
8. Define Safe Regions
It must be possible for the user to define a safe region using the smartphone
application.
2. Engineering Requirements
There are many of the engineering requirements that are required to be achieve
successfully to have an efficient and professional project and they are listed below:
1. Detect the safe regions and safe routes
The tracking system in the smart watch should be very accurate so it can detect
where the children are and where are the safe regions for children that they can go.
It should have big analytical techniques to find the safe regions and safe routes.
2. Detect the life pattern of the children
The life pattern differ from child to child and that’s the reason that makes detecting
the life pattern is very important and essential in order to find if the children went
to unusual places.
3. Detect the potential danger of the children
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The tracking system should be provided with the dangerous places for children in
order to send to the server whenever the child went to these places. It should detect
the strange regions and routes as well.
4. The software design
The code that is going to be developed in this project must be tested to meet the
required goals in this project. It should be narrowed and wrote in a professional
way. The code will be written in eclipse program and it will use knowledgeable logic.
5. Updating time
The application will be designed efficiently in order to be easy to use for the parents
and in the same time it looks very good. The goal is to have an update in the
application each 2 minutes.
6. The smart watch design
The smart watch must have adjustable size to be tight for the children and durable
and not easy for them to take out. It should be lightweight because it is made for the
children. Also, it will be designed in different and beautiful colors to be desirable for
the children to wear. Because children plays a lot, they might play with water or they
will not be aware to take it out when they wash their hands so the smart bracelet
will be waterproof.
7. The battery life
The battery life for the tracking system in the smart bracelet should be designed to
be active for a reasonable time. The goal is to have the smart bracelet on for a long
time like for all the daylong.
8. Energy efficient
Tracking the position for the children should not consumes a lot of power and cause
the battery to die. The energy should be designed to be used in an efficient way and
save the battery life in the same time make the device works perfectly.
3. Marketing Requirements
In order to make a reliable, efficient and rewarding application there are marketing
requirements that needs to be put in our consideration when designing this project. Which are
listed and explained below:
1. The Cost of Smart Devices
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The smart bracelet watch needs to be durable and made from lightweight materials
that are not costly. It will be warn by children and we don’t want to put them in dangers
situation by letting them wear something expensive that attracts the attention of thieves. In
addition, the smart watch cost has to be affordable and acceptable by all parents in a wide
range of standards of living. The convenient cost for a smart bracelet would be around 20
dollars.
2. Accurate Positioning Tracking (GPS / wifi ):
The position tracking should be working accurately whenever there are wifi
network available or the GPS is functioning well.
Also, the tracking system must give the user correct information about child
location without having complex features that may make it expensive.
3. Battery Consumption:
The battery consumption depends on the frequency that we are going to choose
in our designed software application. Our aim is that the smart bracelet watch
has to work for the whole day so we need to use a battery that lasts for 24 hours
and then re-charging it everyday.
4. Automated Notification:
Give instant alert (for example, two minutes) to a detection of a dangerous zone in order
to give parents reasonable amount of time so they can mange to protect their child from
the dangerous situation.
5.
Data Mining Capability:
The server should have history about the children’s location so it can notify the
client(s) who are the parents for example.
6. Usability:
The user expecting a smart watch that is comfortable to be worn by their children and in
the same time easily used application throughout the period of utilization.
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4. Mapping of Marketing Requirements to Engineering
Marketing
Engineering
Requirements
Requirements
The cost for the
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Smart device
Justification
Although that the smart watch is going to be
made with very good qualities, we should
consider its price to be acceptable by parents
to buy it.
Tracking
1, 2, 3, 4
The tracking system should be accurate to
detect the position of the children, the
dangerous places and the safe regions and
safe routes. This will required to use a very
talented tracking system that might cost a lot,
but the price for the device should be as low
as possible so because of that the tracking
system used should be chosen to be very
accurate and cheap in the same time.
Battery
7,8, 4
assumption
The battery is going to be designed to be on
for a long time. It should not consume a lot of
energy while the GPS working. The software
design should have a low frequency to save
the energy for the battery.
Notification
1,2,3,5
The tracking system will detect the position
of the children and it will know the life
pattern so whenever the child went to unsafe
regions and routes it will send notification to
the application. The goal for sending the
notification to the parents is that they can
protect their children so the application will
have an update each 2 minutes and track the
position of the child.
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Data Mining
1,2,3
The system will save all the detected regions
and routes so it can distinguish between the
Capability
safe and dangerous zones.
Usability
4,6
When developing the software design our
aim is to do an application that is easy to use
by the parents. In addition, we need to
design a smart watch device that is made
from lightweight materials so it will not
bother children when they wear it.
5. Engineering and Marketing Requirements Tradeoff
The following chart illustrate if the relationship between marketing requirement
and engineering requirement is positive (+) or negative (inverse relationship) (-)
Engineering
Smart
Accurate
Battery
Automated
Data Mining
Requirement
Devices
Positioning
Consumption
Notification
Capability
Cost
Tracking
1
+
_
+
+
2
+
_
+
+
3
+
_
+
+
4
+
+
5
6
+
+
+
7
_
8
_
6.
Usability
Competitive Benchmarks
There is no competition in this child safety device’s design because there are no companies
that are working with the same design.
7. Constraints and Standards
Environmental
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The movements of the smart watch will take it in and out of GPS and Wi-Fi
connections, so it must be able to determine its location given either.
Ethical and Legal Constraints
This system will not violate any existing intellectual property. Tracking data
collected from smart watches is private information, so the data must not be
transmitted or stored in a way that makes it publicly accessible.
Health and Safety
In order to be effective in supporting child safety, the smartphone application must
not be prone to lapses in its ability to display tracking data and deliver notifications,
and the server must also operate with minimal downtime.
Social
Anyone with basic experience operating a smart phone must be able to operate the
smartphone application and understand the information it presents without
extensive instruction.
Software Platforms
The smartphone application will use the Android SDK and Android API and will be
compatible with the most recent Android release.
Technical Standards
The server and the smartphone application must conform with TCP/IP standards for
communication over the internet. The server must conform with SMS in its
communication with the smart watch.
Sustainability
It should be possible to upgrade and replace components of the system. This
includes the possibility of making the system compatible with new smart watches
and smartphone platforms.
Data Formats
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Tracking data will be communicated in a consistent and transparent text format.
4. References:
Calman Leslie J. and Tarr-Whelan Linda. Early childhood education for all: A wise
investment. Legal Momentum, 2005. Web.
Gibbs, Samuel. "CES 2014: the wristband that tracks your child's every move via GPS."
January 2014. The Guardian. 22 October 2014
<http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/10/ces-2014-tracking-devicechildren-wristband-monitors>.
My Child Safety. "GPS Child Tracking Device / Technology and Child Safety." 2014. My
Child Safety. 22 October 2014 <http://www.mychildsafety.net/gps-child- trackingdevice.html>.
Ye, Yang, Yu Zheng, Xing Xie, Yukun Chen, and Jianhua Feng. "Mining Individual Life
Pattern Based on Location History." Dept. Of Computer Science and Technology,
Tsinghua University. Web.
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