Interview: Vodafone Wireless Innovation Project Winner, Active Networked Tags

The Vodafone Americas Foundation recently announced the 3 Winners from it's Wireless Innovation Project, a new initiative that identifies and funds unique innovations using wireless related technology offering the best potential to address critical social issues around the world. The three winning innovations will share in prizes totaling up to $700,000 USD to support their next phase of advancement and implementation.

We interviewed the 3 Winners projects, to share with you their ideas, work, and innovativations.   Learn more about Active Networked Tags below!

How did you get involved in this Project?

The five of us met a few times to discuss what we were each individually working on. It became clear that the technologies that we each had been individually developing were complementary, and able to be used for low-power networked devices. We started to work on integrating the components, which is underway now, and looking for applications for the system.

Gil Zussman, one member of the team, had written a paper nine or ten years ago about how these sorts of networked devices could be used to locate each other in a disaster even if there was no single node in charge of the rescue effort. That laid down the theory for how these could be used in an emergency, and that led us here.

What are you most excited about in this work?

The most exciting part is the application—we are pretty close to doing something very ambitious. The technologies that we are integrating are each individually interesting, but they really have the most value when we put them together to do something interesting, and in this case, incredibly useful.

What's next for your Project?

We have a lot of work to do—both to scope out the details of how the system works with the folks who do real disaster recovery, and to make the demonstration system prototypes (there is a software and hardware component, each with its own prototyping phase). After that we'll figure out how to get it into the field.

How can those interested in collaborating get in contact with you?

The best way is via email:

• John Kymissis (johnkym @ ee.columbia.edu)
• Gil Zussman (gil @ ee.columbia.edu)