Technology that will help firemen survive
The KTH researcher Isaac Skog has just completed his doctoral thesis on the subject of navigation systems. The idea is to find a cheap and simple solution which can be used in the future by emergency personnel and by the healthcare services.
There are complete navigation systems available already today. But they are expensive, heavy and clumsy when being used for example by firemen. The fact is that smoke-helmeted firemen today must place their trust in a water hose as a lifeline to enable them to exit a building which is on fire.
Things could get even worse if something serious happens.
“If a smoke-helmeted fireman for example faints from the heat, it may be difficult for his colleagues to find him, says Isaac Skog, doctoral student at the institution of signal treatment at KTH.
According to Isaac Skog, small, cheap sensors which are attached to your foot are the key to lighter and more cost-effective navigation systems. He has also conducted research on a number of different measurement methods, and one of them - the one that takes into consideration the rotation speed of the foot - has proven to be the most reliable. This is because it must be possible to gauge when a person is moving or is standing still.
“There are sensors with varying performance and cost. I have used cheap sensors which provide information of a low quality. I then compensate for the low quality of information through smart signal treatment and the use of the information from other information sources, for example typical movements of the foot when a person walks, says Isaac Skog.
The solution is a clever way of getting round the problem of needing to invest in more costly and accurate navigation systems, and in some cases far too clumsy solutions.
“We make use of information as to how people move in order to compensate for the sensors’ failings, Isaac Skog says.
He points out that his research does not provide the perfect basis for a complete navigation system, but that it is an important key component on the way there. There are also more areas of application where the research could be used in the future. One of them is in biomedicine, which would make it possible at the onset of a disease to discover whether a person has stability problems, for example due to Parkinson’s disease.
“Even fire-fighters see more than one area of use. An analysis of the needs fire-fighters have which we carried out some time ago, tells us that they need to know that they have actually carried out an examination of every room in the event of a fire. Even here, a cheap and simple navigation system would be of assistance,” says Isaac Skog.
For more information, contact Isaac’s Skog at 08-790 8434 or isaac.skog@ee.kth.se.
Peter Larsson