Badger-tracking technology could help see through concrete piles
Technology that was invented to track badgers could help provide GPS-like imaging in underground environments, including those built between concrete piles.
GPS is effective above the ground, but below the surface, materials like concrete piles used in foundations, along with rock and dense soil, can cause problems.
Now a team at the University of Oxford is working on a solution, using badger-tracking technology, which could help emergency services personnel locate people trapped underground in the future.
The system uses very low frequency fields and is effective at penetrating rock, soil and concrete even where there is a thick layer of the substance.
As such, it could be a useful way of seeing through pile foundations when people are trapped, or even simply to provide an indoor equivalent to GPS in public places like airports.
“The aim is to incorporate the new technology into smart mobile devices; a demonstrator on an Android platform is being developed,” the university reports on its science blog.
In the years to come, the innovation could help in emergency responses to major incidents, like the 2005 London bombings, in which victims in the affected London Underground stations were difficult to locate with existing technology.