Tessella is a company that builds orientation software using innovative laser gyroscopes and other advanced technologies for the European Space Agency. It is currently working on developing a new, wearable system of tracking field soldiers, which relies on the same technology currently used in Nintendo Wii and iPhone microchip-based motion sensors.

This would be a revolutionary improvement for the U.S. soldiers who will be deployed in high risk areas that are very hard to reach by current GPS systems. GPS technology fails to work in remote locations and the new motion sensors might come either as a complementary solution, so that the base can locate every soldier who has their GPS disconnected, or even replace the tech used for tracking soldiers.

The new wearable location trackers would be a unit the size of a matchbox and contain three microchip accelerometers and three gyroscopes. These gyroscopes would have to be mounted at specific angles to each other. A special piece of software would decipher the data from the sensors in order to give an exact position of that particular soldier relative to a start location.

NewScientist also says there are some algorithms that need perfecting so that from the noises made by motion, sensors are used completely for the benefit of tracking soldiers.

This technology was presented last week at the Space Tech conference and is still in development, because of temperature and power issues that these microchips would have on the battlefield. There is still room for improvement as well, but Tessella hopes to have the new sensors ready in six months. If this tracking technology is used by soldiers in the near future, the number of casualties could be drastically reduced due to the enhanced possibilities of finding a fellow soldier in the chaos of war.


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