New app ensures students get home safe at night with digital friend

(Companion via YouTube)

pIt’s late at night, pitch black, and you’ve just come out of the library or are heading home after a night out. You’ve heard the area you have to go through is a bit dodgy but, head down, you walk fast and hope no one will bother you along the way; most students will have experienced this at some point/p pNow, though, thanks to a group of young people in the US, an app has been developed which allows students to have a friend to digitally walk them on those nights they need a bit of company./ppThe group of five from the University of Michigan decided to take action and create a href=http://companionapp.io/ target=_blankCompanion/a after they began to receive too many crime alert emails from staff, warning them about assault, rape, and robberies occurring on campus./pblockquote class=twitter-tweet lang=enp dir=ltr lang=enCompanion - Never Walk Home Alone a href=https://t.co/qT4Mn3UmoDhttps://t.co/qT4Mn3UmoD/a via a href=https://twitter.com/YouTube@YouTube/a/p; Companion (@getcompanion) a href=https://twitter.com/getcompanion/status/641761055153238016September 9, 2015/a/blockquotescript charset=utf-8 src=//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js/scriptpHaving undertaken computer science internships, the group came together to fix the issue after winning $20,000 in a campus-wide business challenge. With similar apps on the market, they were disheartened to see none specifically targeted students – which is where Companion has now stepped in./ppEasy to use, students plug in their destination and select their mode of transportation. They then add friends or family to be their companion – who don’t even need to have the app installed in order to watch – and contacts, or the police, can be reached with just a tap./pp img alt=companionapp.png src=http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article10497001.ece/BINARY/companionapp.png width=w460/ span class=caption How the app works in 5 simple stages (via companionapp.io/press) /span brIf at any time the user feels unsafe, an ‘I Feel Nervous’ button allows them to send an alert to their contacts. Overall, if students set off a smart trigger, the app checks to make sure they’re okay and, if there’s no response within 15 seconds, the contact will then be alerted that something is wrong and an alarm sounds to ward off a possible attacker./ppSince launching last month, one of the app’s creators, Lexie Ernst, told emUSA Today College/em the response has been phenomenal and said: “We’ve had over 500,000 sign-ups in the last week.”/p