How do we make smartphones even smarter? That was the nagging question that a bunch of people at the Dartmouth College-University of Bologna, Italy could not get out of their head. It drove them to come up with an Android app called WalkSafe, which helps get pedestrians get to the other side of the road alive. The app uses smartphone camera to detect oncoming traffic as far as from 50 meters away, and alert the user by transmitting a loud vibration.

WalkSafe relies on machine-learning and image recognition algorithms to identify the fronts and backs of vehicles. It takes into account varying light conditions, phone tilt, and blur, for an accurate picture of the road.

The developers behind the app are Tianyu Wang, Giuseppe Cardone, Antonio Corradi, Lorenzo Torresani, and Andrew T. Campbell, of Dartmouth College-University of Bologna Mobile Sensing Group.

According to the group, smartphones are open and programmable and come with a growing number of powerful embedded sensors, such as an accelerometer, digital compass, gyroscope, GPS, microphone, and camera, which are enabling new sensing applications across a wide variety of domains such as social networks, mobile health, gaming, entertainment, education and transportation.

Do you think the app is good enough? The Mobile Sensing Group wants to make this better.

Give it a try guys, head over to the Android Market.