Situational Awareness - The Future?

[Don Burke]

SpyderTek once bubbled... As far as the discussion about locators goes...according to this months issue of Outside magazine (possibly Backpackers Magazine)... A new system for diver location has just been developed using elector-magnetics.

They are using this new tec to accurately map all the cave systems under Florida. Interestly, it is in an effort to prove that ground run off polution directly connects up with water table purity level.

So tracking isnt an issue of technology at this point, only distribution and retail.

Spyder

That sort of tracking hasn't been an issue at all. The "Miss Utility" people around here use a similar (much smaller) system to sort out which line is which.

If you've got a dive operation with a tender for each diver, it would be pretty simple to pull this off. You just need a boat to follow each diver. I doubt anyone could handle the capital expense for such a show.

http://www.floridasprings.org/expedition/dispatch2/page.php?page=01

 

[Don Burke]

JohnVranesevich once bubbled... See you people thought I was being all crazy man. Haha. I wonder why in the heck they don't have this in the recreational dive market? Surely the technology couldn't be THAT expensive, and if it was, it would become cheaper if mass produced.

Actually, this is radically different than what you had in your first message.

Hoseless computers have been around for some time and putting ten of them in the water at once isn't much of a challenge.

Intercepting the data signals for ten pressure transmitters also wouldn't be much of a challenge as long as the range isn't too long. I had assumed that the hoseless computers had the depth and temperature sensors in the wrist unit, although adding that capability to the transmitters isn't rocket science.

The "buddy readout" button wouldn't be too hard. A "help me" button would be a little tougher. Precise location would break the bank. Text messaging wouldn't be worth any price.

The answer to your question is that no one thinks it is worth paying for. Price hoseless dive computers and you'll get an idea of what this would cost. It actually would be THAT expensive.

The compatibility issue would also kill the project. Try to get a group of divers to agree on what computer, regulator, or BC to use and you'll see the problem. I've seen extended arguments about which lift bag is the best.

 

[Allen42]

Don't let all these negative comments get you down. It's people like you who start out by asking "what if" and "wouldn't it be neat" questions that are the innovators and changers of our world.

None of us would be on a Recreational Scuba board if people hadn't started asking those same exact questions years ago.
"Go 100 feet UNDER the water? Breathe compressed air? What a stupid idea! That'll kill ya! ..."
or "Re-breathe our own exhalations? Riiight."

I'm not good enought to argue the merits of each of John's suggestions, but I'm willing to bet that much of what John has mentioned becomes reality in mainstream rec scuba in time.

 

[FredT]

Radio waves will work for some fresh water systems. Submarine crews training in the Great Lakes in WWII found the radio worked fine at the limited depths they could reach then.

However, when they got deployed to a sub at sea they found that if you had just a LITTLE salt in the water and it acts like a radio wave sponge. Even slighly brackish water kills radio waves in a matter of feet.

An acoustic link will work in both fresh and salt water if you have the ability to encode/decode the data stream.

FT

 

[rmediver2002]

I am very doubtful we will ever hear from USMC diver unless it is under a different screen name.

It is sad when someone is so desperate for acceptance they will try to gain it on the backs of the folks that really earned it...

I took the liberty of contacting a friend of mine who happens to really be a USMC Diver because your statements did not ring true...

On another subject:

Do you know of any unit like this? Smells like smoke to me, the individual is referring to himself as USMC Diver.

Thanks again,

Jeff


Post #1:
I am a regional trainer for Forward Observation/Insurgancy Operations for Inspector and Instructor (I&I staff) for verious Reserve stations in the 4th Mar Div. I am active duty, working with the active duty counterparts, whom work with the reservist. I work from Wyoming to Texas, Arizona to Luisiana. I travel a lot. Our Battalion HQ is in Houston with 1st BN 23rd Mar. Hope that helps. I am officially attached to 4th Mardiv (MEB), Operations. I do a lot of SOC certification (Special Operations Capable).


Post #2:
Most military dive training takes place in Coronado, CA these days. Especially for SpecOps, or as you put it SOF. Coronado has recently become the JTFUTC (Joint Task Force Underwater Training Center). It is awesome. They even do civilian crossover tec training. I love working there and am anxious to get back.

Post #3:
During a Deep Assault Training Course (Sort of like an AOW/Deep speciality/Multi gas/multi level dive) my student was trailing behind me. We were doing a sloping beach ascent at about 20fsw after having been at max bottom depth of 180fsw, anyway, we had completed all our deco obligation and were preparing for the final beach assault when I get the tugging on my fin. Have you ever seen a Marine OOG but trying to act in-control and macho? It is pretty funny the colors he was turning. He gave the sign for OOG and proceeded to stare at me in the most "I am going to die way". So I gave him the Octo and he took my octo (regular rec setup) and we proceeded to storm the beach (in training).

It was pretty funny though when his head looked like it was going to explode. Well, it probably wasn't so funny to him...but...needless to say, he fail the course and had to repeat it and he bought the beers. Too funny.

Post #4:
I jump out of helo's and planes with parachute and either scuba or rebreather for a living in the Marine Corps but I had never heard of getting wet then hitching a ride on a helo bucket then sky-diving out and into a forest fire. Kind of a stupid sport if you ask me. I am Glad it is a hoax. Might buy one of those T-Shirts though.

Jeff,


Sounds like a big bowl of crap to me. First off Marines do not do and I say again Marines do not do Mixed gas multi level diving. We used either SCUBA, the UBA or the viper, both the UBA and viper are shallow water diving units. No Marines are attached to the SEALs who are probably the only ones other then Navy EOD who would do that type of profile. Not sure of the name of the school other then BUDs and they have started a SEAL advance diving course, again I don't know the name of the course. On another note no Reserve Marine has the expertise in this type of diving as it pertains to military diving. He knows the lingo and is probably a civilian diver who maybe in the Marine Corps Reserve. He is not a Recon Marine since he never mentions a recon unit or their location. Again he probably is just a civilian diver who is in the Marine Corps Reserve and knows diving lingo and has read or heard of the SOF does. If he is a Marine Combatant Diver he would have stated that we have our own school house. HE IS A FAKE.

MSgt
SNCOIC, Marine Corps Combatant Diver Course
Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center
Panama City, FL 32407-7016

 

[lamont]

IMO, most of the "just use your brain" objections in this thread are pretty worthless. I hope none of those people are diving with anything more than an SPG a depth gauge and tables...

And I also don't understand the objection that there's no need for this. Divers becoming separated from their buddies seem to be implicated in many of the DAN accident or fatality cases. Anything that would make it more difficult for this to occur could help prevent injuries or death -- particularly in inexperienced divers.

The same goes with tracking your buddies air supply. We all know that you should be communicating with your buddy to do this anyway with hand signals. But having a read-out on your wrist could help by making it more convenient to check more often, by giving you a better measure as to your buddy's breathing (and panic, hyperventilation or overexcertion), and the electronics will never get clouded by nitrogen narcosis at depth and tell you that your buddy has more air than they do.

There are a whole lot of counter-objections I can think of (e.g. electronics doesn't get nitrogen narcosis, but they can flake out other interesting ways...). None of the objections I can think of though, aren't issues that already exist with diving computers and wireless air gauges.

I'm also not persuaded by the practical arguments of "if submarines don't have it, nobody has it" argument about locators. Its a different problem since all you need to solve is locating someone in relative coordinates over the range of probably less than a mile. You don't need to locate someone in absolute terms anywhere on the surface of the earth. "Radio waves don't work" doesn't persuade me since there's a lot more left of the EM spectrum which you could try to use. You also don't necessarily need a sonar system like boats use. I don't have any better specific ideas because I don't know enough about the physics of sound and sonar underwater, but I can see that sonar is solving a different problem space -- you don't have to bounce a signal off a target and propogate it back.

If you ask me what diving is going to be like 20 years from now, I'm betting its closer to the ideas that the original poster had.

 

[BigJetDriver]

John, et al,

We do have some forms of HUD available. Kevin Juergensen offers one that has both an LED and a vibration warning called the"DIVA".

Mike Cochran of Cochran Computing has been working on a true HUD mounted in the frame of a mask which would show depth, time, and tank pressure, but this has not made it to full production as of this writing (and may well not ever, for various reasons).

Now, of course, if you can put something like these two ideas together, along with a small but affordable INS for accurate position information, you'll have it made. Just ensure that your patent is in force and ironclad.=-)

 

[jonnythan]

lamont once bubbled...
IMO, most of the "just use your brain" objections in this thread are pretty worthless. I hope none of those people are diving with anything more than an SPG a depth gauge and tables...

]

What else do you need?

Even more seriously, none of that is necessary. Even if you did have all that, you still need to have the skills to keep track of your buddy and all his stats once one of your computers or transmitters fails for whatever reason. And once you have the skills to do it without the transmitters and computers, the computers and transmitters are completely unnecessary and complicate an incredibly simple process.

 

[BigJetDriver]

jonnythan once bubbled...
]

What else do you need?

Even more seriously, none of that is necessary. Even if you did have all that, you still need to have the skills to keep track of your buddy and all his stats once one of your computers or transmitters fails for whatever reason. And once you have the skills to do it without the transmitters and computers, the computers and transmitters are completely unnecessary and complicate an incredibly simple process.

I wouldn't care to comment on the transmitters since, while I have tried them, my diluent and oxygen bottles come with attached SPG's.

And, yes, you need the mental skills to keep track of yourself, your buddy, and to utilze your back-ups if needed.

However, neither you, nor ANY known human being can sample PPO2 every few seconds, and recalculate decompression based on that real-time sampling plus changing position in the water column and run time. The only thing that can is the wet computer.

(If you can, I submit that Professor Xavier needs you for his school! )

The upshot is that the wet computer has an extremely useful place in diving that human beings cannot fill!