Underwater buddy tracking with your smartwatch?

[Cthippo]

Smartwatch app lets divers track one another underwater

Due to factors such as murky water and limited peripheral vision, it can be difficult for scuba divers to keep track of where their fellow divers are at all times. A newly developed smartwatch app, however, could soon make it much easier for them to do so.

newatlas.com

I'm dubious, but if it works....

 

[Lorenzoid]

I think this discussion is about the same work: Underwater diver location

 

[boulderjohn]

I think this discussion is about the same work: Underwater diver location

It doesn't seem like it to me. One sounds like it is in development, and the other sounds like it is ready to go. Of course, all I know is what I'm reading in the articles.

 

[ThatDogDontHunt]

Both articles are about the same thing from a group from University of Washington.

 

[Nemrod]

Now just need to add either an extension device or have the sensors (solid stage gyros) built into (the iPhone or Garmin device) to allow inertial guidance. The watch would cue on it's also internal GPS capability at time of submersion to fix the starting location and once submerged track position using the inertial guidance system.

 

[Nick_Radov]

Now just need to add either an extension device or have the sensors (solid stage gyros) built into (the iPhone or Garmin device) to allow inertial guidance. The watch would cue on it's also internal GPS capability at time of submersion to fix the starting location and once submerged track position using the inertial guidance system.

It's really not possible to build inertial navigation with a useful level of accuracy into a device the size of a dive computer or smart watch. The drift is too high, at least for sensors (gyroscopes and accelerometers) available on the civilian market.

Diver navigation systems generally fall into three categories.
1. Towed GNSS buoys like the Suex Seika. Very accurate, but only usable from shallow depths and when clear of entanglement hazards.
2. Dead reckoning like the Suex Sinapsi. Basically using a speedometer plus compass to estimate movement over time. Will drift off true position over time, especially in any sort of current.
3. Acoustic pingers like the Desert Star DiveTracker. Won't give you absolute coordinates, but good for bearing and rough distance to a known point or another diver.

Garmin is rumored to be looking to get into this market as an extension of their Descent line of dive watches but it's unclear if or when they'll actually launch a product.

 

[Nemrod]

It's really not possible to build inertial navigation with a useful level of accuracy into a device the size of a dive computer or smart watch. The drift is too high, at least for sensors (gyroscopes and accelerometers) available on the civilian market.

Diver navigation systems generally fall into three categories.
1. Towed GNSS buoys like the Suex Seika. Very accurate, but only usable from shallow depths and when clear of entanglement hazards.
2. Dead reckoning like the Suex Sinapsi. Basically using a speedometer plus compass to estimate movement over time. Will drift off true position over time, especially in any sort of current.
3. Acoustic pingers like the Desert Star DiveTracker. Won't give you absolute coordinates, but good for bearing and rough distance to a known point or another diver.

Garmin is rumored to be looking to get into this market as an extension of their Descent line of dive watches but it's unclear if or when they'll actually launch a product.

I understand that current development would not provide a high degree of accuracy but I do beleive there is the possibility of getting there. Such a device would not be useful just for scuba but also for example, spelunking, cave mapping, robotics and with potential military use for divers and soldiers in the event of GPS being degraded. I was somehow hopeful that war might become obsolete but it appears that is not going to happen any time soon. That being the case, not all future conflicts will be assymetric with now a much greater potential for peer level conflicts and what might happen to GPS or equivalent satellites should that ever happen. And military stuff often makes it's way down to the civilian level in due course which explains how my air rifle has thermal night vision I can (almost) afford.