Wireless 'rabbit' to monitor your child's web use
Friday July 18 2008
New technology will enable parents to monitor their children's use of the internet from other parts of the house.
The adults can be alerted of their kids' activity by getting updates on a wireless rabbit shaped device away from the computer.
Messages about status updates on social networking sites would appear in text format on the 'Nabaztag' (Armenian for rabbit) device.
The technology, which is not on the market, is being developed by one student on a summer IT programme between DCU and UCD.
The programme is designed to help greater communication between parents who are often less computer literate and their kids who are joined up to everything from Bebo, to MySpace and Facebook.
UCD lecturer Aaron Quigley said that the technology that is being developed by University of Texas student Poornima Hanumara can be used by parents to monitor children's PC use. "The main purpose for all of these projects is social connection not just for monitoring."
Professor Quigley said the programme could also make the rabbit glow a particular colour to alert of danger if a child goes onto a particular site.
DCU Professor Gabriel-Miro Muntean said, "commodity is there, we just designed a way to remotely control it".
He said that the ears can also move on the rabbit device which could also be programmed to send out another message.
"This is what the technology allows you to do and to link this with what a child is doing is interesting," he said.
The project called 'Connecting families by sharing the minutiae of their lives' is part of Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School (ODCSSS) -- a 12 week research internship that attracts international and local IT students to DCU and UCD.
This is the fifth year of the project and this year several of the projects could be adapted to be used for child safety.
At the end of the 12 weeks the project could be taken by a company and adapted into a product.
- Sarah Neville
