Posted on Tue, Aug 31, 2010
by Carol Politi
TRX is pleased to have been selected by Globe Manufacturing Company, LLC to team in the development of an integrated, body-worn electronics system for firefighters and first responders. The Globe body-worn electronics system includes both the TRX Sentrix™ tracking system and the Zephyr Physiological Status Monitoring solution.
The “wearable” indoor location and personnel tracking system is expected to be immediately useful for personnel working in environments where GPS is unavailable or unreliable including Workplace Assessment, Training, Rehab, Incident Command, HazMat, SWAT, and RIT operations. Beta field-testing of the new system will start in early 2011 with commercial deployment slated for early 2012.
TRX will provide Globe with its infrastructure-free Sentrix Personnel Tracking and Location System, which enables first responders to locate personnel in areas where reliable GPS is unavailable. Globe is integrating TRX technology into its turnout gear so firefighters can just suit up and go.
Posted on Fri, Aug 13, 2010
by Carol Politi
Nick Younker, Senior Editor of the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, recently interviewed Carole Teolis, CTO of TRX, about the application of GPS-denied navigation technologies to enhance training systems and overall situational awareness for dismounted ground forces. TRX is supporting the development of training systems for the Army that leverage the TRX Sentrix system 3D situational awareness and indoor tracking technology.
The "Future Ground Forces Interview" can be read on the IDGA site here.
Posted on Wed, Aug 04, 2010
by Carol Politi
Day 2 of the WPI Personnel Tracking Conference profiled more interesting technology development and launched the start of a standards development process for personnel tracking technology.
Francine Amon (Leader/Firefighting Technology Group, NIST), Larry Konsin (Working Group Chair, NFPA 1801), and Bruce Varner (Fire Chief, Santa Rosa Fire Department/NFPA Technical Committee Chair) all discussed efforts ongoing to establish standards for tracking systems (new) and electronic safety equipment. A working session on standards development led by Francine Amon established a steering committee for the development of personnel tracking technologies.
Bruce Varner delivered the perspective of the firefighter, incident commander, and fire chief regarding tracking system requirements:
- Firefighter: transparent to individual, automatically on, very accurate
- Incident Commander: must operate in background until needed, 3M or better accuracy, alerts upon crew separation of more than 10 ft, lack of motion, distress alarm, sudden increase in heat conditions
- Fire Chief: very accurate, low cost, low maintenance, and unlimited lifetime warranty!
One of the big takeaways in general from the day is how much interest there is across DHS, DOD, and law enforcement, and firefighters in GPS-denied location - and how common the baseline requirements are for this technology. Specific concepts of operations differ - and these differences will drive variations in system implementations - but the common thread is the need for systems that rely on navigation to function when inside or otherwise not in areas of GPS coverage. DARPA (Dr. Stefanie Tompkins) specifically pointed out that many systems are being built with the critical assumption that they will have location or localization (with the implication being where this is not available these systems will not be able to function.) Stefanie also pointed out that it is not cost effective to build a custom navigation system for every single problem - an extensible and modular system is required.
A working group of user community representatives also got together to review progress and discuss requirements. Firefighters, law enforcement, DHS, and industry personnel discussed progress, system requirements, and whether requirements should be updated to reflect progress and increased knowledge base within both the user and vendor community over the past two years. This group felt that a steering committee of firefighters from different regions would be useful in helping to ensure developers received solid and balanced feedback (across metro, suburban, and rural areas with different funding levels and organizational resources). The standards group recommended that the user community be part of its steering committee so the output from these two working groups was well correlated.
Additional perspective on the conference has been posted on firefighterclosecalls.com here.
Posted on Tue, Aug 03, 2010
by Carol Politi
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) hosts a unique forum every year: “Precision Indoor Personnel Location and Tracking for First Responders”. This forum is a collection of technologists, customers, and program directors who gather to share requirements for and the state of the art of indoor tracking technologies. The conference is focused entirely on the market for tracking applications and technologies that demand and require zero pre-installed infrastructure.
One of the great aspects of this conference is that it allows technology developers and customers to mix directly, share requirements and issues, get feedback, and show progress. Here are some highlights from the user community presentations during day 1 of the conference:
- Chief Billy Goldfeder (EFO, Deputy Chief, Loveland-Symmes FD) – Chief Goldfeder provided a compelling overview of the need for tracking for firefighters, profiling numerous tragedies that may have been avoided with better accountability and better knowledge of where first responders are when inside a building responding to an incident. He also pointed out the instances where technology won’t help – where good procedures can be instituted to prevent situations where tragedies might occur. The session provided a good reminder for all developers that our customers are focused on their business – protecting lives - and need simple and reliable solutions that simply work without adding extra tasks to an already complicated operating environment. Chief Goldfeder publishes “The Secret List” newsletter to enhance communications and bring forward issues in an effort reduce injury and death in the first responder community.
- Ric Plummer, Fire Engineer (Firefighter, Berlin Fire Department) & Jeff Lenti (STOP Team, Mass. State Policy Academy) gave detailed presentations on the requirements and job of first responders in fire and police departments respectively. Requirements they emphasized include:
- Both firefighters and police wear a lot of gear - adding to an already packed belt/suit is difficult so minimizing size/weight/power is critical
- Location and tracking systems need to deliver floor first, then XY coordinates (i.e., location on floor). Elevation is critical.
- Incident commanders are going to show up after the incident has started with a laptop in their car and firefighters already on the scene. They need to be able to start managing the incident at that point.
- Firefighters need to use the system and train on it all the time. (System must be easy to use and integrated into operations for this to happen).
Also interesting were presentations from the LA County Sheriff’s Department, the DOD Test Resource Management Center (TRMC), and the US Army (Future Soldier Initiative). TRMC specifically indicated that GPS-denied location was a high priority for the DOD – both due to GPS jamming and due to natural and man-made infrastructure that impacts GPS reception. While operational processes and form/fit vary, there is a clear confluence of relatively similar functional requirements from DOD, DHS, and state and local for GPS-denied tracking technology.
Jalal Mapar (Program Manager, DHS, S&T Directorate) noted that while “It is just a guidance, navigation, and control problem", tracking without any installed infrastructure down to 1 meter accuracy – in demanding environments – is no easy task. He called for getting products to market more quickly even if the more stringent requirements have not been met. DHS has been supporting programs for the past 4 years (including the GLANSER program to which TRX is contributing as part of the Argon ST team). In addition to its direct program support, DHS announced that it will be sponsoring the tracking conference next year as a DHS S&T workshop.
Stay tuned for updates from day 2.
Posted on Mon, Aug 02, 2010
by Carol Politi
The TRX Sentrix Personnel Tracking System is now commercially available - and we have shipped our first systems! Sentrix delivers location and tracks personnel within environments where it is not possible to rely on GPS (e.g., when you are indoors) and where fixed infrastructure does not make sense due to expense or unreliability. This video shows the Sentrix Command Station tracking in a 16 story building – without fixed infrastructure.
How does it work? The individual being tracked or monitored wears the small Sentrix Tracking Unit on their waist. The Tracking Unit delivers enhanced inertial results using a unique motion classification capability that accurately identifies a wide range of human motions, including forward and backward walking, side stepping, crawling, up and down stairs, and elevators. The Sentrix Navigation Algorithm then intelligently fuses this inertial information with compass, altimeter, ranging and if available, map, and GPS data to deliver 3D location.
Sentrix is testing and qualified for safety and inspection applications, including flexible support for integration with third party sensor, communications, and situational awareness systems. Reach out to us to see if Sentrix is right for your program or if you would like to integrate Sentrix within your system.
Posted on Tue, Jul 20, 2010
by Carole Teolis
An increasing number of technologies are cropping up to deliver location where GPS cannot - for example, inside natural or man-made structures. Most indoor geolocation approaches depend on some level of pre-installed infrastructure and accuracy varies widely.
Many solutions available to augment GPS leverage signals of opportunity from surrounding infrastructure such as cell towers, Wi-Fi, TV signals or location information from “ad hoc” infrastructure (e.g., RFID tags), and the accuracy of the results varies widely based on infrastructure location and availability.
Wireless cell site IDs can deliver accuracy in the hundreds or thousands of meters, and triangulation techniques that leverage signal strength from multiple adjacent cell towers enable accuracy of 50 meters at best. WiFi location applications (e.g., such as that from Skyhook Wireless) use databases of known WiFi access points and observed signal strength to identify proximity to observed access points in order to determine an approximate location. Accuracy is dependent on the number of access points in the area, obstacles (buildings, walls, etc.) but location returns are sufficient for many consumer applications that require an approximate location (e.g., 10s to 100’s of meters accuracy) without elevation data.
Inside structures such as hospitals, factories, and warehouses, tracking applications often use the WiFi techniques outlined above as well as relatively short-range asset tagging and ultra wideband approaches. RFID and other tag-based solutions rely on a pre-installed network of fixed scanners throughout a building or indoor structure. Accuracy of these systems is determined in part by the density of scanners, proximity of assets to scanners, and environmental obstacles (e.g., walls). UWB location systems measure the time difference in the arrival of signals from multiple high bandwidth radio sources. These systems are generally rely on pre-installed readers and tags that operate at relatively short ranges. All of these technologies are useful for in-building tracking of assets or people when ownership of the area in which people are being tracked is tightly controlled and the area in which tracking is required is well defined (e.g., a hospital or factory).
What happens in the case where you cannot rely on such infrastructure?
Today, personnel operating indoors, underground, or in other GPS-denied areas are often secured using simple no-motion (e.g., PASS) devices which produce audible alarms. They are often accounted for using “roll calls” via voice radio. Locating personnel accurately – without infrastructure – requires the intelligent integration of many types of available navigation sensor data including GPS (where available) and also ranging radios, compasses, gyroscopes, accelerometers, and altimeters. To avoid incorrect position estimates, algorithms must intelligently assess the quality of sensor data and eliminate or de-emphasize data from sensors providing inaccurate information (e.g., compass data affected by surrounding environments or metal structures).
A segment of the overall location market, GPS-denied location is the least served by viable commercial solutions today. Practically, users want to know where their personnel are – at a minimum which floor and which quadrant of the building - and whether they are safe. And they want to do this without adversely impacting critical, time sensitive operations by requiring slow manual setup or incremental tasks for personnel in what are typically emergency and dangerous situations. This is the market TRX Systems is working to serve.
Posted on Mon, Jul 12, 2010
by Amrit Bandyopadhyay
When Jack Bauer is tracked on a map back at CTU, chasing a suspect through a building, we start to believe that indoor tracking technology must be available to our first responders. Unfortunately, this prized tracking technology is not yet in the hands of first responders, dismounted soldiers, or safety personnel. A fire chief we were working with once asked us, "If we can send a shuttle to the moon, why can't we track a firefighter in a building?" While the explanation doesn't necessarily sound satisfactory, tracking a man-made object outside is a simpler task than tracking a person who can crawl, climb, etc within artificial structures.
The primary tracking technology that is available on the market that does not require dense pre-installed references to achieve “reasonable accuracy” is GPS. GPS is best suited to outdoor tracking applications with clear views of the sky that can tolerate position inaccuracies sometimes on the order of tens of meters. The use of road maps to enforce strict rules to reduce these errors is what makes GPS effective in vehicle tracking. It is acceptable when in a car to have a system with a constraint such as “the car should not be inside the shopping mall”.
Personnel on the other hand, do not follow these path rules. When a personnel's trajectory moves within or near structures or obstacles, GPS signals are blocked or corrupted severely, rendering them unusable. And personnel may very well be inside the shopping mall or business center.
Some of the scenarios where GPS encounters challenges are:
- In dense urban areas: Geometry of the satellites selected for location computation degrades in close proximity to buildings, and the trajectory quickly deviates from the ground truth.
- Inside buildings: In large buildings GPS usually loses its fix, and often continues reporting a single incorrect location, while the “tracked” personnel moves throughout the building.
- Underground. GPS reception is almost non-existent within caves, mines and other underground structures (e.g., subways).
In such areas, alternatives are required that augment GPS to enable tracking of assets and personnel indoors. Many approaches are being taken to deal with such “GPS-denied” navigation challenges. We will address these different approaches in subsequent posts.
Posted on Fri, Jun 18, 2010
By Carol Politi
Welcome to the TRX blog. We are starting this blog to discuss the markets and technologies that have come together to make it possible to track and safeguard personnel when they leave areas with accurate GPS coverage.
Firefighters, dismounted soldiers, police, miners, safety inspectors, and other security personnel face danger every day – often in urban areas, buildings, mines, caves, or densely forested areas where GPS location technologies don’t work. Solutions to deliver precise asset or personnel tracking when GPS is not available often count on either fixed or ad hoc infrastructure (cell towers, Wi-Fi hot spots, RFID tags). These technologies can work very well – particularly when you control the environment in which assets or people are being tracked. However, there are many situations where it is not possible to count on infrastructure. These include tracking fireman in a burning building, safeguarding law enforcement personnel in urban areas, and delivering situational awareness for dismounted soldiers in urban canyons, caves, and within buildings.
As a reader of our blog, you will be hearing from a diverse group of people and hearing about a diverse set of projects – all working to safeguard the people safeguarding our world. You will also be the first to learn of news and happenings at TRX Systems.
Welcome!