A new app has been developed to help keep people safe while out at night.
The Epowar app is currently being trialled after being developed by a team at Bath University and is designed to automatically sound an alarm and alert contacts when it senses the user is in distress.
Erin-Jane Roodt first came up with the idea for the alarm app when she felt vulnerable while jogging in a badly lit park, and she is hoping the feature will reduce the number of attacks on people at night, especially on female runners.
And the team are expecting the app will be finished and ready for a complete rollout in nine months’ time.
Erin-Jane, a BSc Business student at the university's school of management, said: "It is something I have always been passionate about as a woman.
"I've always felt scared walking alone, so when I saw that smartwatches could be used to detect heart attacks, I had a kind of lightbulb moment, and thought 'maybe this can be applied to women's safety'."
The student is working with co-founder Maks Rahman, an engineering student who has just graduated, to create a prototype to test on their friends.
The app uses a smartwatch linked to the user's mobile phone, which monitors the person’s heartrate and body motion to detect whether they are in distress.
Erin-Jane said the feature should eliminate an issue with rape alarms and other conventional safety products that require physical activation, as this is not always an option in the event of an attack.
In his own statement, Maks said: "If someone is attacked, in that moment suddenly their motion goes from being very regular to not being regular at all, quite erratic, if they go to the ground, if they are trying to fight someone off, and it will detect that change.
"It will immediately alert your emergency contacts, your friends and family that you have selected, with your location and current state, it will play a loud alarm and it will save all of that data into the cloud."
