A Smartphone-Based System for Improving Pedestrian Safety

With the prevalence of smartphones, pedestrians and joggers today often walk or run while listening to music. Since they are deprived of their auditory senses that would have provided important cues to dangers, they are at a much greater risk of being hit by cars or other vehicles. In this article, we present PAWS, a smartphone platform that utilizes an embedded wearable headset system mounted with an array of MEMS microphones to help detect, localize, and warn pedestrians of the imminent dangers of approaching cars.