From the killed-by-red-tape department...

[cheeni]

This is deeply ironical on many levels...

For most people, being swamped with information is just annoying. But for soldiers, pilots and police officers it can be a matter of life and death. So a device that prevents urgent communications from getting lost in bureaucratic babble, patented by US defence firm Honeywell, could prove invaluable.

Honeywell has been investigating ways to reduce information overload under a grant from the US government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The company's idea is for soldiers' uniforms to conceal an electrocardiogram, galvanic skin response detector, and respiration and blood pressure sensors. These instruments should be able to tell when a person is breathing hard, sweating and has a racing pulse. If so, the time is probably not right for HQ to ask them any mundane questions.

The same system should be able to sense when a person is calm and breathing easy, so ready to receive a load of information.

If all the sensors suggest that the solider is dead, the patent suggests that important messages should be relayed to another whose sensors still show signs of life.

Read the soldier sensor patent here.

[Via New Scientist]

Comments

[sriramb.livejournal.com]

What a load of crap!

[meghadutam.livejournal.com]

Heh! It it wasn't so disturbing it would be very funny.

[karbak.livejournal.com]

I wonder why you consider it ironical. Apart from the last bit about the sensors re-routing around dead soldiers, a lot of the other things make sense. I don't know about soldiers, but I definitely can say that in emergencies pilots are required to remember and act on a thousand different things, any of which could lead to a safe ending to the emergency, or disaster. Air traffic controllers are trained to communicate optimally in such situations - I had an English lecturer part of whose PhD thesis work at IIT Madras involved studying the nuances of this ATC-pilot communication. I'd also recommend you read the book account of the Gimli Glider incident - it gives you detailed insight into how well-trained pilots react in such situations. The name of the book escapes my memory right now, but there are detailed accounts of the incident online here and here.

[karbak.livejournal.com]

Ah, the book is called "Freefall". Here it is :

http://isbndb.com/d/book/freefall_a04.html

[arucard2.livejournal.com]

oh fun!!! you featured my former employer. :D

If all the sensors suggest that the solider is dead, the patent suggests that important messages should be relayed to another whose sensors still show signs of life.

ROTFL.

time to ask mundane questions... "when a person is breathing hard, sweating and has a racing pulse." > Soldier, are you having sex? :)

[mannu.livejournal.com]

>Soldier, are you having sex?

Can't think of a better way to piss off a soldier.