Indian Origin MIT Scientist Manisha Mohan Invents a Sticker-Like Wearable Sensor to Detect Sexual Assault!

With increasing crimes against women especially in urban areas across the globe, ensuring their safety has become more important than ever.   

Although the government is taking steps for women’s safety, technology can play an important part in that too.  

Sexual assault is one of the most heinous crimes prevalent today. It is time to get serious about it.

Manisha Mohan, a research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US has created ‘Intrepid‘, a smart sticker that’s intended to detect, communicate, and, ideally, prevent sexual assault.     

Images credit: Manisha Mohan   It connects to your phone via Bluetooth and it can attach to any piece of clothing.  

Named Intrepid, the sensor is capable of telling the difference between one voluntarily taking their clothes off and someone else forcibly doing so.

How does it work?

If somebody is trying to remove the clothing off the victim’s body, a message is sent to the smartphone to confirm if the act was done with consent. 

If the victim does not respond within 30 seconds, the phone begins to emit a loud noise to alert the user and nearby people. If the victim does not stop this alarm using a predefined password within the next 20 seconds, the smartphone app can automatically send distress signals to family or friends, along with the location of the victim.  

The device is designed to memorise the way one usually dresses and will work even when the victim is unconscious or unable to fight back.  

The user has to save five emergency contacts on their phone, and the Bluetooth integration with a smartphone app will send out a distress signal in the form of a message to those contacts.  

Her invention could help women fight back the miscreants by all means! Excellent creative and innovative idea indeed!