DragonForce

DragonForce, distributed by Drakontas is yet another awareness platform for emergency and security crews (similar to the swiss GeoGeny).The system allows commanders to send voice and text messages; communicate by drawing on clean slate or incident scene maps; and share images to the users carrying typical GPS enabled PDAs.

According to A PDA for police and soldiers lets them track colleagues using a digital map, Drakontas “had planned an aggressive marketing campaign starting next year for college campuses and public-safety agencies”. One of the current test exercise is the simulation of a high school hostage-rescue situation. My understanding it that they target campuses first because the wireless connectivity is controlled. Scaling this up to an uncontrolled environment such as a battlefield is another issues.

DragonForce will use VoIP instead of good old walkie-talkie systems. I am not sure where the improvements are. Moreover it is a very centralized systems that does not seem to support message propagation from one peer to the others.

A DragonForce client… hmmm or prototype.

Relation to my thesis: DragonForce is a real-world pervasive system that must rely on location and performant/reliable connectivity to communicate both voice and data. It would interesting to know how defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp manages uncertainty in its similar systems supporting “battlefield intelligence”.