War technology lends a hand on Mt. Hood

Heat-seeking planes and phone-seeking gizmos are among the advanced technologies used this week to locate three stranded climbers on Oregon’s Mt. Hood, MSNBC reported, and the companies involved wasted no time in deploying them (nor in hyping it). When mountaineer Kelly James (now deceased) placed an anxious cell phone call to his family, for instance, T-Mobile began pinging the phone in order to determine its location. That, however, only narrowed down James’s location to a quarter-mile range.

To help out, North Carolina-based Iomax Management Group flew in a more precise phone-locating kit. “Under ideal conditions, which we hope to be in up there, we’re talking 10 or 20 meters,” said Iomax executive Ron Howard, eager to explain his company’s competitive advantage. “If you look at what cell phone companies do for a living … they have no reason to refine the technology to this degree.” Iomax’s reason is that the same technology can locate the cell phones used to detonate roadside bombs in Iraq.

Also aiding in the rescue is Colorado-based Aracar, whose name is actually an acronym for the Alliance for Robot Assisted Crisis Assessment and Response. In short, they make search and rescue UAVs ranging in size from your typical radio-controlled airplanes to drones with a wingspan exceeding three feet. The craft can send back both still imagery or real-time video, or even thermal imagery from a microbolometer that identifies the “plume” of heat rising from a warm body set against the colder background temperatures of snow and ice.

“Some of the systems that we have, have been used quite extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan,” one Aracar executive said. “What I’m trying to do now is take that same technology and bring it into disaster response applications.”

-read more at MSNBC’s CosmicLog blog