19/09/2011. Shortly, older adults and people with some type of physical or mental disability will be able to carry with them, if they wish, a GPS device the size of a pack of cigarettes to be located immediately, in case of loss; this device, according to its creator, can be delivered free of charge by the Government of the Federal District.
The coordinator of the team of the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM) that works on it, Jaime Pedro Abarca, reported in an interview with MILENIO that the idea is that this team, whose cost of production and labor would be around one thousand 500 pesos, is subsidized and managed by the local government.
The project began in a UACM laboratory in Santa Martha Acatitla last February, with a total budget of 130 thousand pesos, and although its location technology is not innovative, it is in terms of the social approach that is intended to benefit the elderly and people with limited resources.
In a maximum of four months, the work team, where the students Rubén Paul Rodríguez Monroy and Iván López Juárez, from the Engineering in Electrical Systems and Telecommunications career, will carry out a pilot test in an area of one kilometer around the school. Currently the project is 60 percent complete.
Device & Monitoring
The person who requires it will bring with it said mobile receiver that, even with an investment greater than about 600 thousand pesos, can reduce its size to prevent it from being stolen. The device will be connected to a monitoring center.
If the subject carrying it feels disoriented or lost somewhere in the city, it will activate a small button and on the screen of that monitoring center a red light will turn on and off intermittently
which will be the distress signal.
On the site there will be an operator attentive to the signals that are emitted. This light always remains green and changes to red when the distress alert is issued.
At that time the person in charge of the system will press on the light on and on the monitor a satellite map will appear with the location of the person asking for help, in addition to the date, time and personal data of the user, as well as the home and mobile phones and their medical information, to know if they have any disease, said the interviewee, who has a master's degree in Communications from the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute.
Rudimentary research
The project is being worked on in a small laboratory of the UACM, where only the essentials are available: four computers and two interfaces of the device with their batteries and cables. That's all.
He said that the technology used is not new, since there are already companies in Mexico that have been marketing it for almost two years. What is new, the researcher said, will be its social approach, "that the government grants it as a social benefit."
The device on the market has a cost of between seven and 15 thousand pesos and is used for the location of people, objects and pets. In addition to the device, the user has to pay a monthly rent to be monitored.
The objective, Pedro Abarca concluded, is that immediately after the pilot test it is used in the elderly population of Iztapalapa and then generalize its use throughout the DF. This requires at least four other monitoring centres.
Source: milenio.com
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