TrailMate

TrailMate

Inspiration

Campus safety conversations often focus on emergencies — but not the everyday walks that make up student life. Late-night study sessions, quick trips across campus, and routine walks home can still feel isolating or uncertain. At the same time, many safety tools overlook accessibility and community engagement. We were inspired to create something that didn’t treat safety as a standalone feature, but instead integrated safety, accessibility, and social connection into one unified experience. TrailMate was built to make students feel supported before situations escalate — while also making walking a more engaging and inclusive activity.

MLH PRIZE CATEGORIES API USAGE

Snowflake: Used to find the 'Trending Now' walk, it gets all of the most popular destiniations, along with the current walks and time and distance from the user and prompts them with a banner to join the one that matches them best!

GEMINI API- Used to post a walk, will get locations and fill in the form and post it automaticly, you can say something like "Hi my name is alex and i want to go from gore hall to perkins student center with 3 other students, and maybe even get bobba" and it will find the best bobba place and make the path for you!

Eleven Labs: We used 11 labs to give direction instructions as voice to text, such as "Turn left at the light", or " user joined the walk!

DIGITAL OCEAN: We used digital ocean to hose our website!

.tech domain: We are accessible via the "trailmate.tech" which is fully operational and allows users thanks to digital oceans vps systems to use our website!

What it does

TrailMate is a student-only walking companion that blends peer-based safety, accessibility-first navigation, and community wellness. Students can find verified walk partners in real time, filter by dorm or distance, and share live location during active walks. For solo walkers, a Safety Check-In Timer alerts a chosen contact if the user does not confirm arrival. Beyond safety, TrailMate makes walking purposeful through “side quests,” allowing users to add meaningful stops like study breaks, dorm visits, or campus events. The platform includes gamified features such as leaderboards, badges, walk tracking, and relay-style team challenges. Accessibility is built in through wheelchair-accessible route filters, obstacle-aware paths, high-contrast UI, voice guidance, and optional hands-free AR navigation.

How we built it

We built TrailMate using React Native for the frontend and PostgreSQL for backend data management. Map functionality and routing were integrated to display real campus paths, accessibility labels, and live walk activity. Authentication is domain-based to verify student status using university email addresses. We structured the app with modular routing and campus data layers so that it can scale beyond the University of Delaware in the future. The AR navigation prototype and accessibility filters were designed with scalability in mind, even within the constraints of a hackathon timeline.

Challenges we ran into

Mapping accessibility accurately within limited time was one of our biggest challenges. Ensuring route labeling (fully accessible vs. limited access) required thoughtful design despite limited real-time data. Balancing feature ambition with hackathon constraints also pushed us to carefully define our MVP — we had many expansion ideas but needed to scope realistically. Additionally, integrating safety features without creating privacy concerns required careful thinking around verification and data handling.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that TrailMate is not just a conceptual safety app — it is a working prototype with multiple integrated features. The buddy matching system, safety check-in timer, live walk feed, leaderboard, and AR accessibility routing all function cohesively. We’re especially proud that accessibility was not treated as an add-on but as a foundational design principle. Most importantly, we built a product that feels real, scalable, and immediately applicable to student life.

What we learned

We learned that safety design must be proactive, not reactive. We also learned how important thoughtful scoping is in rapid development environments. Building TrailMate reinforced how deeply interconnected safety, accessibility, and community actually are. From a technical perspective, we strengthened our skills in frontend structuring, database integration, routing logic, and designing scalable architecture under time pressure.

What's next for TrailMate

Next steps include expanding beyond the University of Delaware by onboarding additional campuses through modular mapping integration. We would also like to integrate official campus safety systems, improve real-time obstacle reporting, and refine AR navigation for stronger hands-free guidance. Additional community features — such as expanded team challenges and campus event partnerships — are also planned. Ultimately, our goal is to make TrailMate a standard tool for college campuses nationwide, redefining how students move through their environments safely and together.