Epowar alarm app to keep runners safe being trialled

Maks Rahman (left) and Erin-Jane Roodt (right) co-founded the Epowar app

A smartwatch app which automatically sounds an alarm and alerts close contacts when it senses the user is in distress is being trialled.

The Epowar app has been designed by a team at Bath University who hope it will reduce the number of attacks, particularly on female runners.

Erin-Jane Roodt came up with the idea when she felt vulnerable while jogging in a badly-lit park.

The team hope the app will be finished and ready in nine months' time.

Ms Roodt, a BSc Business student at the university's school of management, said: "It is something I have always been passionate about as a woman.

"I've always felt scared walking alone, so when I saw that smartwatches could be used to detect heart attacks, I had a kind of lightbulb moment, and thought 'maybe this can be applied to women's safety'."

The app uses a smartwatch linked to the wearers mobile phone

Ms Roodt is working with co-founder Maks Rahman, an engineering student who has just graduated, to create a prototype to test on their friends.

The app uses a smartwatch linked to the user's mobile phone. The watch monitors their heart rate and body motion and if they are in distress, the phone will sound an automatic alarm.

Ms Roodt said this eliminates an issue with rape alarms and other conventional safety products which need to be physically activated, which is often not an option in the event of an attack.

The app uses AI to instantly recognise distress in a user's activity

Mr Rahman added: "If someone is attacked, in that moment suddenly their motion goes from being very regular to not being regular at all, quite erratic, if they go to the ground, if they are trying to fight someone off, and it will detect that change.

"It will immediately alert your emergency contacts, your friends and family that you have selected, with your location and current state, it will play a loud alarm and it will save all of that data into the cloud."

The Epowar team have assembled a number of volunteers who, among other exercises, will simulate physical attack to fine-tune the software.