Introduction & Project Summary

Backpack Buddy is a smart-inventory system designed for on-the-go students.  Keeping track of items is difficult for students on tight schedules, especially when different events require different equipment. Notebooks won’t help at soccer practice, and soccer cleats aren’t needed to attend debate club. Our system aims to help busy students by notifying them when they are about to leave home without an important item.

Backpack Buddy consists of three parts: a collection of tagged items, a backpack-based tag scanner, and a phone app that the user can interact with to see what items are inside their backpack. Users can sync the phone app with their Google Calendar events, and they can provide a list of items which they need for each event.

Backpack Buddy is unique in the field of asset tracking tools. Other tools such as Tile focus on locating individual items such as car keys, but do not provide support for managing collections of items and associating them with events. Backpack Buddy is designed with students in mind, and we are committed to eliminating the dread students feel when they leave their stuff at home.