Smart Emergency Response System

ShAir at SmartAmerica Challenge/Expo and the White House

Dec. 2013 - Jun. 2014

Smart Emergency Response System

In an emergency situation such as when an earthquake or hurricane hits an area, people there will be in desperate need of communication means, but at that very moment, cell towers may be down. ShAir could be used in such situations to help people communicate by creating opportunistic networks between people's devices. To pursue this direction, we participated in , a White House Presidential Innovation Fellows Initiative whose goal was to explore the possibilities and benefits of Internet of Things (IoT) by bringing in participants from different sectors to interconnect their systems in a new way. Through the Challenge, we formed a team called Smart Emergency Response System (SERS) with eight other organizations (BluHaptics, Boeing, MathWorks, National Instruments, North Carolina State University, University of North Texas, University of Washington, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute), where our responsibility in the team was to develop a smartphone app for emergency response based on the ShAir platform.

The app was designed to allow people in the affected area to submit help requests. Help requests could be relayed through people's devices via the ShAir opportunistic networks until they got picked up by drones hovering over the area that further relayed them to the mission control center. At the direction of the mission control center, requested items could be delivered. Upon request, sensor-equipped dogs as well as teleoperated and humanoid robots could also be deployed for search and rescue. Using the app, people could also share their situations by sharing messages and pictures, which could also be sent to the mission control center to increase situational awareness. SERS system and the ShAir emergency response app was , and demonstrated in on the following day at the Washington D.C. Convention Center.

Short video clips describing SERS (produced by National Instruments):
SERS talk at the White House (3.6MB, PDF):
SERS was among the six out of 24 teams in the Challenge that were allowed to give a full presentation.
SERS booth map at the SmartAmerica Expo (0.7MB, PDF):
In response to emergency situations, search-and-rescue dogs equipped with variety of sensors including a camera and GPS are deployed. In the meantime, people submit help requests using the ShAir emergency response app. ShAir creates opportunistic networks between people's devices to relay help requests. The drones equipped with directional antennae for long-range communication provide WiFi access to the areas under them, and send help requests to the mission control center, where delivery routes for requested items are optimized. At the direction of the mission control center, teleoperated and humanoid robots are deployed for search and rescue.
Demo station posters (3MB each, PDF):
Other materials:
- SERS poster (2MB, PDF)
- SERS flyer (0.5MB, PDF)
- SERS expo flyer of ShAir (0.4MB, PDF)

ShAir emergency demo app (6MB, Android APK):

The demo app was made available for download at SmartAmerica Expo, so that the attendees could try submitting help requests on site.
(Tested on Android 4.1 and above. Requires Google Play Services 4.4.52 or above. Configured exclusively for the expo demo settings.)

Photos of the expo and the demo booth:
Press coverage:
Design News, Scientific Computing, Phys.org, PSFK, Huffington Post, Nextgov, State Tech, Science Magazine, FedScoop, Commerce.gov, IT Business Net, IEEE Spectrum, Information Week, PR Web, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Live Science, Communications of the ACM, Yahoo! News, Discovery, Science Magazine, Gizmag, Fox News, IEEE Spectrum, Fast Company, Eureka Alert, UW News, Evaluation Engineering.

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