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New Wireless Technology Goes Where GPS Can't
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jul 31, 2008 03:20 PM
from the which-is-to-say-in-australia dept.
from the which-is-to-say-in-australia dept.
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."
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Communicate in remote areas ... (Score:2, Insightful)
... by placing communication nodes in said remote areas?
How is this idea novel, isn't a tad bit obvious?
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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_.
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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
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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
CSIRO (Score:5, Informative)
More concisely (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Parent
TDK (Score:1)
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That's not a gadget. He's just happy to see you.
So what, the implemented a UWB system? (Score:1)
print page (Score:1)
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sensor networks researched at lots of places (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [fu-berlin.de]
A few pictures of the hardware are here:
http://cst.mi.fu-berlin.de/projects/ScatterWeb/hardware/index.html [fu-berlin.de]
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 :)
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bat sonar? (Score:1)