Last but not least: "Uepaa!" at Swisscom
Uepaa is an off-grid smartphone solution for locating alpine athletes involved in accidents. Swisscom is supporting the ETH spin-off Uepaa Swiss Alpine Technologies with its marketing efforts.
The startup Uepaa has developed a safety service for people who spend their leisure time and sporting activities in the mountains. The alarm app locates accident victims via other smartphones in the vicinity, even in areas without mobile phone coverage. This is made possible by peer-to-peer technology, which links the smartphones of all Uepaa users and rescuers to form an ad hoc network that automatically searches for the nearest cellular network. In an emergency, the mountain rescue service is alerted independently of the network, and overflight searches are also possible. However, the Uepaa rescue service is already effective at an earlier stage: missing person reports or time-consuming searches for people are also to be significantly reduced in future via the tracking system of the emergency call app, which enables timely alerts and direct assistance from fellow rescuers.
The Uepaa app is available to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in time for the 2013 hiking season. The range of functions is constantly being expanded, starting with automatic accident detection and extended companion assistance.
The company Uepaa was founded on January 31, 2012 by Mathias Haussmann and Franck Legendre in Zurich. (uma)
