An award-winning app requires only talent

With innovations disrupting all around the world, IndianCEO picks up this unique story from a land far away. 7 students from South Fayette School (Pennsylvania,USA) created a safety app that makes riding the bus safer for young children. BusBudE is what they called it as.

Team members are senior Meghan Banerjee, juniors Joe Cavanaugh, Sam Cohen and Nick Wilke, freshman Vinay Pedapati and eighth-graders Anish Thangavelu and Parv Shrivastava. These students read an article about a child getting dropped off at the wrong stop. This aggravated their thought process of coming up with an app to solve safety concerns of transportation for children.

Unlike students at that age who are busy thinking about sports, education, college, this bunch of solution seeking students took it upon them to come up with a safety app. There are more than 3M apps in app stores but these students wanted a customized app that could make bus transportation safer.

How does BusBudE work?

Parents need to first register their children into this program. Students receive a small tag that has embedded information specific to him/her. This tag has to be attached on the backpack. As children enter and exit the bus, they need to scan the tag with the mobile device located with the driver. NFC technology is used for reading the information. Once the information from the tag is read, a text message is sent to the parent’s mobile with the date, time, and bus number. This information is sent to the parent when their child enters and leaves the bus. Now the parent can track the child.

The app was developed for Verizon Innovative challenge, but the team didn’t win. They took it as a learning and further enhanced the app that helped them win the National Infosys Maker Award and a $10,000 grant for the app.