They combined their knowledge of computer science and physics and with the guidance of their teacher, built a robotic system that attempts to annihilate the victims of Forgotten Baby Syndrome. The students of the 6th grade of the 11th Primary School of Kalamaria and the IT specialist Nikos Avgoulas, give lessons on social sensitivity and innovative digital applications.

“When 14 years ago I became a parent for the first time, I was shocked by the case of a father who had forgotten his child in the car with a tragic, unfortunately ending”, the informant and deputy director of the 11th board of Kalamaria points out to the Athens/Macedonian News Agency Nikos Avgoulas who was inspired and implemented this idea together with the students.

How WeDoSave – FBS Forgotten Baby Syndrome works

St1 student Anastasios Trouliaris describes to APE-MPE how “the system has a microbit that is attached to the child seat, which checks if there is weight so that it understands that there is a child while at the same time it checks the temperature in the car’s cabin . If the temperature is above the limit we have set, 25-27 degrees Celsius, the microbit notifies with an audio message on the device we have on the steering wheel and on the driver’s smart watch.”

It is important to clarify, he says, that “our system has another microbit which, when it receives a danger message, opens the window to cool the child”.

“When we learned that there are so many child victims of heatstroke due to this syndrome, we thought we could help with our knowledge of programming and robotics by building a device that would save their lives from possible death. The courses we did in Informatics were enjoyable because we tried to find a solution to the problem of the forgotten child syndrome which can happen to each of us” says their student F2 Athanasios Rozis.

“This year, with the 6th graders, we dealt with Forgotten Baby Syndrome and built and programmed WeDoSave – FBS Forgotten Baby Syndrome. It is a robotic system with BBC: Microbit which detects in the car the presence of a child, an elderly person, a person with a disability and also a pet in the next phase and notifies its driver with a message, sound notification and opening the windows, in order to reduce the internal temperature of the car, before it’s too late,” explains Mr. Avgoulas.

Hundreds of victims of the Forgotten Child Syndrome

In the US alone, over the past 25 years, over 900 child deaths have been recorded due to Forgotten Baby Syndrome, as he says. This concerns cases where the parent has forgotten their child in the car resulting in their death from heatstroke due to overheating of the car cabin, especially in the summer months.

“The children accepted the idea very enthusiastically, added their own suggestions, concerns and participated with great care and professionalism, combined their knowledge in IT and Physics and were interested in both the social part of the work and the commercial part of the future” emphasized Mr. Avgoulas.

Since 2017 in the 11th Primary School of Kalamaria and in the context of the Informatics course, the students have been involved in robotic constructions that propose solutions to everyday social problems of our fellow citizens, such as Wedocare: Robotic Parking Space Protection System for the Disabled, Wedoguard: Accident Prevention System in train crossings and more.