Technology originally developed
to track badgers underground could soon be used to locate people in an
emergency situation such as a bomb attack or earthquake. GPS is good at
pinpointing locations in open spaces but below the surface it's a different
story. The limitations of conventional tracking technology were exposed in the
2005 London bombings, and numerous earthquakes since, where the emergency
services struggled to locate people in underground areas or buried beneath
debris. Positioning indoors is also a challenge, with no clear winning
technology that is able to address people's day-to-day needs, such as finding
their way around an airport.
In 2009 researchers from Oxford University's Department of Computer Science, faced similar problems when they joined a project to study badgers in Oxford's Wytham Woods. The animals spend much of their lives underground where conventional technology couldn't keep tabs on them. The solution developed by researchers is a technology based on generating very low frequency fields. This has the unique advantage of penetrating obstacles, enabling positioning and communication even through thick layers of rock, soil and concrete. After the work with badgers the team realised the technology had potential applications in many areas such as location-based advertising, finding victims in emergencies, and tracking people and equipment in modern mines.
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