The problem with panic buttons
Every safety product is built around a button: press it and help comes. But the moments that matter most are often the ones where no-one presses anything — a fall that knocks someone out, a phone left in a bag, a person who simply doesn't come home and can't say why. A button that has to be reached is no help at all when the person can't reach it.
That's the gap Howie is built to close. Instead of waiting to be triggered, Howie watches — quietly, in the background — for the signs that something isn't right.
What Howie watches for
Howie reads context, not just a button. It knows when someone was due to arrive and hasn't, when they've left a safe area they'd normally stay inside, when movement stops when it shouldn't, and when a scheduled check-in goes unanswered. When the pattern looks wrong, it raises the alarm to the right person — a parent, a family member, or a workplace responder — with the context and last-known location attached.
It's tuned to who it's watching. For a family, that's a child who hasn't reached school or an older parent who's gone unusually quiet. For a lone worker, it's a shift that's run long past its end with no check-in. Same watcher, different judgement.
Calm, not creepy
Howie isn't surveillance. It doesn't build a history of where people go — it looks for exceptions, tells the one person who should know, and otherwise stays silent. That's the whole point of Vygard: safety that runs in the background and only ever interrupts when it truly matters.
Frequently asked questions
- Which Vygard apps have Howie?
- Howie is available as an add-on to both Vygard Sports and Vygard Family, and the same AI welfare monitoring runs on the Vygard platform for organisations.
- Does Howie track people all the time?
- No. Howie looks for exceptions — a missed arrival, a left safe-zone, an unanswered check-in — and notifies the account holder. It isn't a location history or a surveillance tool.
Last updated 2026-09-08