The Global Positioning System — short for GPS — is the most widely-used system for positioning and estimating time by establishing a wireless communication channel with satellites. Smartphones rely on this system, and so do smartwatches, especially those targeted at sports enthusiasts. However, when it comes to underwater activities like scuba diving or deep-sea snorkeling, it’s not of much use.
A solution like this could save lives, especially in scenarios where underwater visibility is low, making it difficult or even impossible for a team leader to see every single diver in the group. If one of the divers gets entangled in ropes or any other emergency befalls them, the app could help triangulate their location and save their life.
Alright, so the app will help a team leader keep an eye on the entire group — but what about their real location for a person above the surface? “You would need an anchor device that is above the water surface, say, fixed to a buoy or positioned on a boat,” Shyam Gallakota a professor at the University of Washington’s Allen School and lead author of the research paper, tells Digital Trends.
The app prompts the smartwatches to emit a sound using its onboard speaker array while the microphone picks up the signal underwater. Gollakota explains that it takes about 1.5 seconds for the audio ping to make its way back to the team leader’s smartwatch. What gives? The system is not without its limitations. Gollakota tells us that for the system to work, it needs at least three smartwatches in the group talking to each other via sound waves. When there are only two smartwatches involved, the app can only provide ranging information. That’s because each smartwatch in the group works as a node. The more the merrier, because having more than three smartwatches in a connected pool only enhances the location triangulation accuracy.
That’s a minor inconvenience in itself, despite the code’s free availability. Compared to simply installing an app from a digital store, running an app off the code from GitHub takes a certain level of technical expertise. Gollakota tells us that the team is working to get the situation sorted but says it’s not a particularly easy process to create an Apple Watch app, given the stringent quality and UX rules on the App Store.
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