Situational Awareness - The Future?

Greetings All:

Well, being newly not even certified yet (if that's even a classification), I am surprised by two things:

1. How advanced some of the diving equipment really is.
2. How archaic some of the diving equipment really is, hehe.

I spent the last 5 years doing information warfare research for the pentagon (as a civilian). My main focus was on computer security related issues. However, one of the things that many of my colleagues spent a lot of time researching and working on was the idea of "situational awareness" for soldiers. Knowing what your current status is, AND the status of those around you (both friends and foe). We always had some very interesting conversations on the topic.

From someone just getting into diving, the idea of situational awareness is one that really seems lacking. Sure, there are cool dive computers now that let you look at your wrist to find out your depth, pressure, time, etc. But what about your buddy? To really know anything about him, you have to go face to face with him so that he can give you a couple of archaic hand gestures.

Why isn't there integration? My dream dive computer would provide the following:

1. It would let me know my depth, pressure, and all relevant times (how long I've been down, how long I have left, how much air time I have left based on my current consumption rate, etc.)
2. Warn me with a visual and audible signal if something comes up that needs my attention (time almost elapsed, air running low, etc.).
3. Allow me to hit a button and view MY BUDDIE's stats, and provide visual and audible signal if something comes up that needs attention with HIM.
4. Provide a means of text messaging with my buddy, so that we can communicate more in-depth if necessary. I realize that you don't want to be typing out messages in an emergency, as it takes too much time, but certainly there are many situations that arise that being able to communicate in depth a bit more would be useful. Typing short-cuts that do word prediction like many cell-phones use would be handy here as well.
5. Have ALL of this information sent back to the surface and displayed on the dive boat, so that they too would know our current status. The gross lack of situational awareness for those on the support boat is just ridiculous IMHO.
6. Oh, these units should also have locators built in, so that the dive boat knows exactly where their divers are at all times as well. This would take the "search" aspect out of "search and rescue".

Total situational awareness. All of the technology current exists, and has existed for a long time, it just seems like there's nothing out there in the dive industry that has put it all together yet.

I wonder if this is due to economics, or a lack of demand for these features? Am I the only one that thinks that situational awareness would be useful from both a fun and safety perspective while diving?

Perhaps I'm a little on the anal retentive side.....

You forgot the heads-up-display inside the dive mask, and also the diver to diver communication system (no text messaging required).

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I did once see a dive computer unit which when over your ear, and would alert you in a nice female voice about depth etc. Made by Mares perhaps?

Tom

it's called a submarine.

Only the military can afford them using our money. Welcome to the **real** world.

A heads up display would be a good idea... there are dives I've been on when I could hold my gauges and computer up to my mask and still not see it.

But some of the stuff you're talking about - underwater locator beacons - just don't exist, as far as I know. Ever wonder why Submarines don't have GPS? The signal can't travel through the water.

Greetings:

I understand that public sector GPS doesn't work underwater. But, if we can track marine sea turtles, we sure as hell should be able to track divers.

I just don't think that all of that is necessary honestly. Numbers 1 and 2 already exist. 3 isn't really a bad idea but then you are never supposed to get far enough away from your buddy so that a tap on the shoulder can't get your buddy's attention. If there is an accident, your buddy should be close to you and should also be making visual contact with you every now and then. 4 is not necessary at all in my opinion.

Typing short-cuts that do word prediction like many cell-phones use would be handy here as well.

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These short-cuts are dive signals. Buddies should be comfortable with any signals that may be of use before the dive begins. Any major message that needs to get across should be able to be clear through dive signals, that's why we have them. There are a lot of dive signals so there aren't many situations that can't be described in a signal or a couple of signals. 5 and 6 aren't bad really but they seem more like statistic tools than safety tools. It seems that if there were a problem that could be read from the dive boat, it would probably wouldn't be seen as a problem until it is too late. If a diver has 800 PSI and is currently still down from a 100' dive, should you go after them or assume that they are on the way back? They could pop up with 200 psi left or they won't pop up at all and it will be too late. It just seems that the people most in favor of this would be DAN. They want you to call DAN before you call anyone else during an accident. What exactly can they do for you at the moment of crisis? Nothing, they just want to know when, where, how, why, and who. Sure they can give you advice but I think the EMS is a better person to talk to first. Anyway....not bad ideas I just don't think they are all necessary to put into every diver's computer.

We just do that stuff with out brains.

But, if we can track marine sea turtles, we sure as hell should be able to track divers.

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You can track turtles when they surface and get a signal from them. They have to surface about once an hour or so... as do recreational divers. So that won't do you any good, for what you want.

Again - if a multi-billion dollar US nuclear submarine doesn't have GPS or a device signalling location, you can rest assured it won't exist for the dive community.

MechDiver once bubbled... it's called a submarine.

Only the military can afford them using our money. Welcome to the **real** world.

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I spent 20 years using and fixing the "gee whiz" crap that someone thought was a good idea.

We can't even get everyone to use the same air connections. Ponder how long it would take to establish a communications standard for this.

While it would be handy for the boat to be able to easily locate the body of someone unconcious on the bottom, the false sense of security produced by the system would probably make it necessary more often. I expect more people would die.

All this data transfer is nice when you have links that run at the speed of light. Figure out the problems when you start having packet collisions with a twenty user system with 4800 feet per second as a propagation speed. Add the multipath problems and you can't get there from here. Just having six divers with two deco bottles each will probably overwhelm the links used for hoseless computers. Consider what happens with a cattle boat and twenty divers with gear of various brands and conditions.

Why send the diver underwater at all if he can get all of this information trough a link? Why not send an ROV and let the user sit in front of his computer thousands of miles away?

What is all of the situational awareness for? Am I trying to kill the diver hiding around the next rock before he kills me? What pieces of information do I need from my buddy that hand signals won't work for?

This is a solution in search in a problem.

JohnVranesevich once bubbled...
I understand that public sector GPS doesn't work underwater. But, if we can track marine sea turtles, we sure as hell should be able to track divers.

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Also understand that precision GPS doesn't work underwater either.