Gray Meteoroids

We are trying to solve the problem of false alarms in home security systems and trying to improve home security overall. One of our team members saw how his home security system sometimes triggers false alarms if the home owner forgets the disarm the alarm system before opening the door. This is a widespread problem because home alarm systems are common, so the occurrence of false alarms is nontrivial. Additionally, this problem is serious because the police is notified during these false alarms, so precious time and resources are wasted. We believe our solution will be able to dramatically decrease the number of false alarms by automating the step of manually disarming the alarm, and it increases security at the same time due to the two factor authentication step. SmartLock solves this problem by combining facial recognition and satellite positioning to disarm the alarm instead requiring the user to manually disarm. When the user walks near his/her door, his/her phone will recognize that the current position of the user is in front of the house, and the lock will use facial recognition to determine whether the user is the home owner. If both steps pass, the door is disarmed, and the user can then use a key to open his/her door. This eliminates false alarms caused by the user forgetting to disarm the door prior to opening it, which accounts for the majority of false alarms in security systems. Additionally, since we require the user to be both within the range of the door and pass the facial recognition test to disarm the door, there is second added layer of security compared to traditional disarming systems.

We are a team of three members, all from different schools, and we formed the team at Hacktech 2018, the hackathon which was held at Caltech. We brainstormed ideas for a project for the initial 2 hours and ultimately decided on this two factor authentication lock idea because it solves a widespread real world problem that one of our team members experienced firsthand and improves home security at the same time instead of at the expense of it. We worked on the project together at the hackathon and collaborated on the proposal to Imagine Cup as well.