New Wireless Technology Goes Where GPS Can't

An anonymous reader writes "Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has developed a new wireless localisation system with the ability to track, sense and communicate in areas where GPS and other wireless technologies cannot work. Originally developed for use in horse and motor racing, the high-accuracy terrestrial localisation system is being commercialised to allow first-response emergency workers to be accurately tracked in dangerous environments such as in building collapses or underground mines where other tracking technologies will not work. The system uses nodes attached to workers that communicate with portable fixed nodes around the site, allowing the position of the worker to be tracked in areas where typical tracking signals wouldnt work. The nodes can be modified to also collect data from the worker, such as heart rate, core temperature, and whether there are any dangerous gases or radiation in the area. The system has government-funded backing and is set to be commercialised and deployed in Australia's emergency services within three years. Other applications for the technology include military, sport, counter-terrorism, motor and horse racing."

Comments

Communicate in remote areas ...

[capnchicken]

... by placing communication nodes in said remote areas?

How is this idea novel, isn't a tad bit obvious?

Re:Communicate in remote areas ...

[nategoose]

It sounds a lot like one of the touted uses of Zigbee that I've been hearing about for several years now.

Re:Communicate in remote areas ...

[TrebleJunkie]

The novel idea is _usually_ appears obvious to the first person to see it in action. Which is pretty much why most inventors deserve whatever rewards they can get. It wasn't obvious until *after* the inventor invented it -- before the inventor invented it, it was _unknown_.
 

Re:Communicate in remote areas ...

[Freeside1]

How is this idea novel, isn't a tad bit obvious?

it is obvious, and it isn't novel. the idea has been around for awhile. they're called wireless sensor networks i believe. nothing to see here move along

Re:Communicate in remote areas ...

[dgatwood]

No, a novel idea doesn't appear immediately obvious the first time you see it in action. If anyone with experience in the field sees it in action and immediately knows how they would do the same thing, it isn't very novel (or is very trivial, depending). When the first horseless carriage came out, people thought the inventor was nuts....

We've had devices for doing portable location of people for a long time. They're called cell phones. We've had data gathering sensors on people in dangerous environments for a while. We've used portable cell towers to cover areas damaged by floods and earthquakes or during search and rescue ops in the middle of nowhere. I see very little that's new in any of that except that it is being commercialized and tightly integrated instead of being done in an ad hoc fashion. What am I missing?

CSIRO

[IceCreamGuy]

In case anyone has forgotten, CSIRO is the group that wouldn't give a Letter of Assurance to the IEEE with regards to its 802.11n patents and who sued Buffalo et al. I guess they really do use those wireless patents after all!

Re:CSIRO

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think this would qualify as obvious. There is at least one company in the US that is already doing the same thing. They have mobile devices that can determine their relative position to base units which have GPS. Then they just add GPS to their relative position to get their virtual GPS location.

The company used firetrucks with base units and fire fighters with PDAs or something to get their location inside the buildings.

I don't remember the names or anything but it was in the newspaper a few months back.

Finaly

[bobwrit]

Finaly something comes along and makes it so I can have a less that 6 meter accracy range.

More concisely

[bill_mcgonigle]

wouldn't give a Letter of Assurance to the IEEE with regards to its 802.11n patents

Can also be read as, "CISRO is why 802.11n is stalled at draft stage and worldwide deployment is slow and uncertain." Let's all thank the Australian government for throwing a wet blanket on the industry.

'Wankers' is aussie, right?

TDK

[benburned]

I was really expecting batman's gadget.

Re:TDK

[Kohath]

That's not a gadget. He's just happy to see you.

So what, the implemented a UWB system?

[doojsdad]

Did they do something novel or just implement current UWB technology?

print page

[A little Frenchie]

again people forget about that... http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1017393246;fp;16;fpid;1;pf;1

Re:print page

[A little Frenchie]

err ok.. for that site you must go by the ads before going to the print page, sorry

sensor networks researched at lots of places

[stsp]

from the which-is-to-say-in-australia dept

I'd be surprised if research on sensor networks wasn't done across the entire planet. Our CS department (located in the northern hemisphere) does more or less the same thing:

http://cst.mi.fu-berlin.de/projects/ScatterWeb/index.html

A few pictures of the hardware are here:

http://cst.mi.fu-berlin.de/projects/ScatterWeb/hardware/index.html

It's fun to program these little guys, I made one of them blink LEDs and beep at people entering the room once, sooo cute :)

Re:sensor networks researched at lots of places

[Freeside1]

i concur, the last project i did in college at Ohio State University was about preventing a man in the middle attack in a wireless sensor network.

bat sonar?

[frission]

did anyone say batsonar?