Two industry partners will receive $700,000 from the Next Generation Technologies Fund to fully develop wearable technology for soldiers, known as the ‘Fight Recorder’.
A soldier-worn system aimed at capturing valuable data on the battlefield, the technology would also act as an emergency beacon to reduce the time taken to reach and treat battlefield casualties.
“Survival rates for battlefield casualties are closely tied to response times and the Fight Recorder will enable Defence to quickly locate and treat casualties,” Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne said.
“In addition to serving as a location beacon, the data captured by the Fight Recorder could be used to inform the design and performance of soldier equipment and protective wear.
Start-up telecommunications company, Myriota and wearable technology company IMeasureU, were selected from forty-seven quality industry and university applicants from across Australia and NZ to develop the technology.
Myriota, a UniSA spinoff, recently took out the New Business award at SA's Telstra Business Awards. Myriota’s technology combines low cost, long battery life, micro transmitters with small (20cm x 20cm) low earth orbit satellites to communicate over very narrow bandwidths. According to Myriota, this complete direct-to-orbit communications platform enables global IoT connectivity at a cost base not achievable by any other platform. Apart from Defence, Myriota is actively engaged with companies across agriculture, the environment, maritime, transport and logistics, mining and utilities monitoring.
IMeasureU have built wearable technology solutions for the elite sports market. According to the company, the technolgy enables coaches, teams and athletes’ deeper training and performance insights around fatigue identification that don't merely rely upon GPS and heart rate.