If the information about soldiers deployed in the battlefield is easily acquired, how much will the operation be improved? Equivital, UK based company, developed a wearable computer, called Black Ghost, that can sense the critical information about soldiers, like health status and location, and reply it to the headquarter. By monitoring heart rate, respiration or GPS data, the commander can know if a soldier's performance deteriorates over a certain period or he/she crosses the border.
The LifeMonitor together with Black Ghost provides data management and visualization of data. The big driver of this system is the ability to gather and centralize performance data from multiple soldiers over time. This allow better understanding of soldier and squad performance over time and how to improve it through optimized methods. Also, it helps with soldiers to quickly identify areas in the field that could leave them vulnerable to attack.
Reference: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-01/21/equivital-black-ghost
It's amazing to me to think of the advances of this kind of technology could further. The ability to have small smart sensors that can track multiple points of data and relay that information to a user interfaces has an almost unlimited number of uses. The first one that comes to my mind would be to use this type of technology to log stress and strain on long haul drivers and find characteristics that lead to accidents. The implications of driver safety for professional drivers that spend long periods of time behind the wheel are enormous.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, data points like driver heart rate and blood pressure could be geo-tagged and reviewed to find stretches of road that place greater stress on the driver. The data could be combined from many drivers to find roads or areas that are troubling for all drivers and the governments could focus resources on improving the conditions of roads.
Or large trucking companies can track drivers of their fleet and adjust routes and delivery times accordingly. If they find that a driver on a long haul route is experiencing abnormally high fatigue, they could alter the route or expected arrival date. The opposite could also be used, if they find a driver that is running on all cylinders (pardon the pun), they might expect that he will arrive earlier than scheduled and make plans to utilize his available time accordingly.