Speak Up: We Got Your Back

After witnessing series of global, national, and local events where people were challenged while advocating for social justice, the students from Erie, Pennsylvania were reminded of the importance of the right to use and share one's voice.

“Sometimes, others try to take your rights away. Participating in Solve for Tomorrow, which challenges us to use STEM to drive positive change in our community, we are determined to run a project that can protect the civil rights of people.”

These National Winner students presented a simple yet complex solution: using a mobile phone like a body camera to record events around them. Since filming long videos uses up the phone's memory and stops shooting when the phone display turns off, they created a body cam app that runs in the background.

“We Got Your Back. That’s the name of our app.” We Got Your Back constantly records video, but in four-minute segments. After a four-minute segment has passed, it is saved to the phone and a new recording begins. Once a segment is saved, the previous segment is automatically deleted and this cuts storage needs drastically.

Users can also record without pressing the button by saying activation phrases like 'Trouble is starting!' “Realistically, you probably can’t start recording right when you need to and might end up missing something crucial. By having the last four minutes recorded, the user would have footage of the immediate past.”

The smartphone camera can also be used as a dashcam. Saying command words like “I'm being pulled over” would make a hands-free switch to the selfie camera and give the user a video record of any interactions with people at their car’s window as well as a front view of the last four minutes.

“We Got Your Back may not be able to protect the users from physical attacks. But we believe that providing a record of the surrounding events at vulnerable conditions gives a sense of security and reliability for one to speak up for themselves.”