I was on the S.C.I.F.I (the Society for Collaborative Investigation into Futuristic Inventions) team in the Fall semester of 2010.  Here, I served as both a hardware designer and programmer. This was a project sponsored by Lockheed Martin.  As pitched by the client, “the goal of this project is to take a science fiction story (of the teams choosing) and create a prototype of any three items or technologies in that book, movie, radio show, etc (also of the teams choosing)”. As a team of four, we were responsible for not only coming up with the concepts for the project, but also creating the prototypes of these ideas. After quite a few rounds of brain storming, we came up with these three ideas:

The Arrow Of Apollo (inspired by the 2004 Battlestar Galactica remake) 

A shoulder-mounted, hands-free location-finding device that projects an arrow shaped laser mark onto the ground in front of the wearer. The arrow will point to a pre-selected way-point, and will automatically adjust itself based on the wearer’s own directional heading.

The Cardio Gauntlet (inspired by Star Trek tricorders) 

A glove with built in ECG (electrocardiography) capabilities. The wearer simply touches the patient with ECG enabled fingers and the patient’s heart rate is displayed via an android phone mounted on the wearer’s wrist.

The Dradis (also inspired by the 2004 Battlestar Galactica remake and maps seen in first-person shooting games)

This device consists of two separate components.  One is a hardware device that gathers data on local atmospheric conditions as well as relays information to other individuals who have a Dradis. The second component is software for a Droid X phone that controls the Dradis, Cardio Gauntlet, and Arrow of Apollo via Bluetooth.

To give these devices a little more purpose, we also came up with a simple scenario that helped describe the real-world functions of these devices. The basic premise is that these devices are designed for use as aids in an above ground search and rescue situation or for disaster response. We designed the function of these gadgets under the assumption that there roads are blocked or non-existent and cellular phone service is unavailable.

The first job of our hypothetical rescue worker is to get them to their destination. If the user puts a predetermined gps location into the Arrow of Apollo using their Droid X, they will be pointed in the direction they need to walk in order to arrive at the given coordinates via the Arrow’s Laser.

Once they arrive at the disaster/search area, the aid person may have to give medical aid to injured individuals at the scene.  A very quick assessment of the patient’s heart condition could be obtained by firing up the Cardio Gauntlet’s software and placing the ECG components embedded in glove on a bare patch of the patients skin.

Finally, if the rescue worker needs to mark a location they have found as hazardous, or share a point of interest they have found, all they have to do is mark it with the Dradis, which will then relay this new information to other individuals also carrying a Dradis device. Besides relaying marked locations to other teammates,  the Dradis is also capable of relaying the wearer’s location to the rest of the team, allowing all teammates to keep track of each other in real time.