Thursday, November 03, 2011

Real time monitoring of athletes and soldiers in the field

Dr. Ken Taylor at the CSIRO ICT Centre is developing a real time athlete monitoring system for the Australian Institute of Sport. A smart phone relays data, including location and effort, via a wireless network to a web based map and graphs. This allows a coach to monitor the athlete's performance and also talk to them via the phone.

It occours to me that the same system could be applied to military personnel. For training purposes the low cost smart phones could be used, to monitor the performance and safety of the troops of the training range. For use in combat, the system could be integrated with the DOMINATOR Integrated Infantry Combat System being acquired by the Australian Defence Force. This would allow commanders to not only monitor the location of their troops, but also their physical condition, allowing for better planning. Australia could also provide the military forces it trains, with the lower cost smart phone based system.

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