The Development of a Child Alert and Notification System for Forgotten Baby Syndrome

Abstract

Automobile related injuries and deaths are a global concern. The issue of Forgotten Baby Syndrome, FBS is very familiar nowadays and there are a few death cases reported yearly. FBS is the medical explanation for how a parent can walk away from a car without realizing their child is still inside. Previous research confirms that the leading cause of death for children is heat stroke and hyperthermia after being left unattended in motor vehicles. Moreover, a child’s body overheats three to five times faster than adults. The goal of this innovation was to design a system that detects the baby's sounds, particularly crying sounds so that the parent could alert the baby while they were away from the vehicle. When the proposed system senses a certain amount of time of crying sound, the system will be activated, and the parent will receive a notification via Telegram. If the parent had been notified earlier that they would be leaving a child behind, the death or undesirable tragedy could have been avoided. NodeMCU module is used to create the software and hardware development environment, while a sensitive capacitance microphone act as an input used to detect the crying sound of the baby. An alert warning will be sent by telegram to the parent's smartphone. This innovation was designed to save the lives of unintendedly children left in a vehicle and to alert parents with FBS. In conclusion, the development of a system that detects the presence of children can help to reduce the risk of children being left alone in a car.