GLOBAL – Ever since the Nokia Locate Sensor concept was unveiled by NRC back at CES in January, we’ve been engrossed with this innovative lost-and-found tagging solution. Back in February we asked you for your suggestions on possible alternative uses for the Nokia Locate Sensor – the idea being solely to get us all sparking off each other for interesting ideas that we’d then hope to get comments on from the NRC team responsible for Nokia Locate Sensor. Last month we ran a poll to find out your favourite three ideas from the sea of suggestions offered by many of you.
This week we managed to locate Kimmo Kalliola, Research Leader in Wireless Systems & Services at NRC (and one of the key people in the Nokia Locate Sensor team), and get his comments on your top three ideas for alternative uses for Nokia Locate Sensor. Read on to find out what he had to say about the ideas you voted for.
We’ve put Kimmo’s comments beneath each of the ideas you chose, so scroll down to catch all of his comments.
Extension to Nokia Morph Concept
David Olorundare: “It could follow use of the ‘morph’ concept, allowing my whole enviroment to be connected to it… It would be powered by several power sources simultaneously & intelligently based on the immediate circumstance: by green energy, the environment, sound energy, a slim battery, or by mechanical movement of where its placed .e.g. attached to the wrist. By all these it will enable the locator to be used in a number of cases: Anticipate and track disease outbreaks across populations… Protect endangered species and natural resources / Monitor the health of aging, disabled, and remote individuals and communities / Share real-time data about weather and environmental hazards / Plan roads, transit services, utilities, and urban systems /Domestic use; for communicating and interacting with all ‘connected’ devices&appliances: allowing the creation a truly intelligent environment / Help in data mining work, to gather information during analysis / Act as a language translator, to interprete language between any two people of different background;allowing the bridging of sociological and geographic gaps and barriers.”
Kimmo Kalliola, Research Leader in Wireless Systems & Services at NRC: “This is something we have been thinking about. By attaching this type of tag to different places you could put these tags everywhere and enable people to leave information on them. It’s a bit of a vague concept, but it would be possible. David’s concept is very far reaching, but potentially, yes it could be done. The mobile device becomes the gateway to dynamic local information.”
Child monitoring tool
Nuno Pereira: “I think this technology could be used to keep track of kids in day nursery (+4years old)…”
Alcatraz: “Keeping track of kids in shopping malls. There is no bigger gut-wrenching feeling than letting your kids hand go for 1 minute then suddenly discovering they’ve wandered off and you can’t see them.”
Kimmo Kalliola, Research Leader in Wireless Systems & Services at NRC: “It makes sense, and it’s technically possible, and there is a genuine need. But when doing this we need to be aware of the security and reliability issues involved.”
Bike ride tool – linked to Sports Tracker
Dion O’Neill: “I’d like to use one of these on bike rides. I often drop my brother when we are riding and it would be great to have a warning go off when that happens so I know to slow down and wait for him to catch up. Link it into Sportstracker and then it could tag the places I drop him, as well ! A additional signal when the sensor comes back into range would also be great.”
Kimmo Kalliola, Research Leader in Wireless Systems & Services at NRC: “Yes. Pretty innovative idea. The problem could be solved and could be done with this technology easily. You could monitor the relative distance between people, no problem.”