TrailMate is a student-only walking companion that combines peer support, accessibility-first navigation, and community wellness to make campus walks safer, more engaging, and inclusive.
Campus safety often focuses on emergencies, but everyday walks matter too. Late-night study sessions, quick trips between dorms, and routine walks home can feel isolating or uncertain. Existing tools often miss accessibility and community engagement.
TrailMate integrates safety, accessibility, and social connection into one platform, helping students feel supported before situations escalate.
- Peer-Based Walks: Connect with verified walk partners in real time; filter by dorm, distance, or accessibility needs.
- Safety Check-Ins: Solo walk? The Safety Check-In Timer alerts a chosen contact if you don’t confirm arrival.
- Purposeful Walking: Add meaningful stops like study breaks, dorm visits, or campus events (“side quests”).
- Gamification & Community: Leaderboards, badges, walk tracking, and relay-style team challenges.
- Accessibility-First: Wheelchair-accessible routes, obstacle-aware paths, high-contrast UI, voice guidance, and hands-free AR navigation.
- Frontend: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for a responsive and accessible web interface.
- Backend & Database: Supabase for user data management and authentication, with Node.js handling server-side logic.
- AI Integration: Large language models like Gemini for natural language features, Eleven Labs for voice synthesis, and Snowflake AI for advanced analytics.
- Maps & Routing: Mapbox to display real campus paths, accessibility labels, and live walk tracking.
- Authentication: University email verification ensures student-only access.
- Modular Design: Structured for easy expansion to other campuses.
- Accurate accessibility mapping with limited real-time data.
- Balancing ambitious features with hackathon constraints.
- Maintaining user privacy while implementing peer and safety features.
- Fully functional prototype with buddy matching, live walk feed, safety timers, leaderboards, and AR routing.
- Accessibility designed as a core principle, not an add-on.
- Scalable design allows easy campus expansion.
- Safety solutions must be proactive, not reactive.
- Thoughtful scoping is crucial for rapid development.
- How to NOT SET UP an api endpoint 😭.
- Gained hands-on experience with frontend structuring, database integration, routing logic, and scalable architecture.
- Expand TrailMate to additional campuses using modular mapping integration.
- Integrate with official campus safety systems.
- Improve real-time obstacle reporting and AR navigation.
- Add more community features like team challenges and campus event partnerships.
- Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/TrailMate.git cd TrailMate - To start up an instance of website:
npm install npm run dev
- In another powershell terminal to run snowflake ai:
node public/snowflake.js