Bluetooth has been with us for around 15 years. Named after Denmark’s
King Harald "Bluetooth" Blatand, who reigned in the 10th Century AD, it
is a technology that everyone is aware of on their computers and
phones, yet not many people choose to use. As a means of allowing
devices to talk to each other cheaply and wirelessly over short
distances, it has tended to stay largely in the shadows, leaving the
limelight to the technologies it connects.
Now however, with the
rapid growth in the use of mobile and sensing technologies, along with
the release of an updated version of the system, means the list of its
applications is growing steadily. From health and agriculture, to
business and electioneering, it is quietly playing an ever more central
role in many of our lives.
“It’s a very flexible, low power, and
predictable technology,” says Professor Roch Guerin, Chair of Computer
Science and Engineering at Washington University, St. Louis. “Bluetooth
targets lower transmission ranges and data rates than wi-fi, and as a
result has lower cost and lower power consumption.”
These costs have dropped further, in some cases significantly, thanks to recent advances. Bluetooth Smart,
launched in 2011, includes a smarter power management system that
allows it to turn on, transmit data and shut down more quickly – in just
a few milliseconds in some cases. Depending on the devices being
connected and the data being transmitted, this updated system consumes
anywhere between half and 1/100th of the power of the previous version.
As a result, machines using Bluetooth that previously ran for a few
months on a coin cell battery, can now run for years.
“Bluetooth
classic is for sending steady streams of voice and audio,” says Suke
Jawanda, Chief Marketing Officer of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group
(SIG), which owns and licenses Bluetooth technology. “Bluetooth Smart
is about sending packets of bits and data to applications.”
Life changing
Healthcare
is frequently cited as one area that hasn’t witnessed the radical
transformations underway elsewhere as a result of the ongoing digital
mobile revolution. The growth of novel personal medical sensing
technologies, many of which use Bluetooth, could soon change this.
Earlier this year, a Silicon Valley-based start-up called Scanadu
sought to raise $100,000 on the crowd-funding site IndieGoGo. In fact
donors pledged over $1.6 million, making it the most funded project in
the site’s history. The product description may have helped: the Scanadu
Scout is perhaps best described as something approaching a real version
of the medical tricorder wielded by Star Trek doctor Leonard “Bones” McCoy.
Placing
the cookie-sized device to your forehead for 10 seconds provides stats
on your heart rate, blood pressure, core body and skin temperature,
respiratory rate, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure and emotional
stress levels. This data is transmitted via Bluetooth to users’ phones
or tablets.
"With recent advances in technology such as Bluetooth,
we are now able to build medical devices that weren't possible just a
decade ago…. at an affordable price [using] existing infrastructure of
smart phone telecoms” says Scanadu’s CEO Walter de Brouwer. “For people
who live far from hospitals, in places like Africa, this could be life
changing.”
On the other side of the Atlantic, a group of
researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne,
Switzerland, is working on BlueCell, a half inch-long device that, once
embedded under the skin monitors substances in the blood such as glucose
and cholesterol so that chronic diseases like diabetes or the effects
of treatments such as chemotherapy can be monitored. The raw medical
data, which is sent wirelessly via Bluetooth to an Android app, can be
forwarded automatically to doctors. BlueCell is still a few years from
commercialisation.
“We chose Bluetooth because of its wide
distribution in consumer devices,” says Jacopo Olivo, one of the
researchers. “It’s an interesting way that Bluetooth can interact with
the biotech industry.”
Other personal health sensors that use Bluetooth include the Cardiopad,
an electrocardiography (ECG) machine developed to monitor heart
activity in patients in remote areas of Cameroon, and Monobaby, a device
being developed to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, also known as
cot death, using an accelerometer attached to baby clothing.
Growing signal
Bluetooth can improve health prospects beyond humans too. Flower Power,
a device due to be launched towards the end of this year by Paris-based
wireless tech company Parrot, measures sunlight, soil moisture,
temperature and nutrient levels in plants, and sends that information
directly to an iPad app via Bluetooth.
By cross-checking this data
against a database, the app provides information about the health of
plants, when and how much to water them, and whether they should be
moved to change sunlight levels.
Flower Power and related
technologies could be vital in developing countries with dry climates.
Sensors could be linked via Bluetooth to sprinkler systems to
automatically optimise moisture levels. The ability to use just the
right amounts of water and fertiliser to produce a good harvest without
wasting resources can improve crop yields and rural incomes.
Bluetooth is also being used to help those in agriculture in other ways. Kenyan mobile tech company Virtual City has developed AgriManagr,
an app designed to speed up and automate the flow of information and
reduce costs for farming businesses. Small, rural tea farmers in Kenya,
for example, complain that unscrupulous buyers routinely under-weigh
their produce by 10-20%. Using AgriManagr, electronic scales are used to
transmit the weight of produce via Bluetooth to a mobile phone which
records this in farmers’ accounts on a cloud-based server. Hard copy
receipts are also printed out.
“When [payments] used to be a
paper-based system, farmers would get conned on the weight,” says
Virtual City chief executive John Waibochi. “Buyers would tamper with
the weight scale.” Going digital and printing receipts “cuts out fraud…
and increases the value to farmers 9-13%,” he adds.
This system
could of course be done without Bluetooth, but being wireless makes it
easier. “Out in the rural areas, cables would not survive,” claims
Waibochi. “And I need my devices to go to sleep immediately after they
are used. With Bluetooth, our devices do that, and can work for 12 hours
without electricity.”
Bluetooth can also provide new ways of
communicating in rural settings where internet access is unavailable or
out of reach for the poor. Gary Marsden, a computer scientist at the
University of Cape Town, developed Big Board, an electronic notice board
that disseminates information wirelessly and for free.
The system
displays a series of icons representing information on various topics
on a screen. Users take a picture of an icon they are interested in with
their phone and send it via Bluetooth to a nearby device which sends
them the information they want. Files can be pictures, text, video or
audio. Potential applications include distributing information on
health, job offers or entertainment.
In a pilot project Big Board
was used to inform voters about the manifestos of politicians standing
in the 2007 Kenyan presidential election. People could take a photo of a
candidate and receive an MP3 of that person speaking. Marsden is
currently working with NGOs and government agencies to develop new
applications.
He also developed Com-Me, a collection of hardware
and software components to help people with limited access to
electricity and the internet create and share content. This includes a
solar-powered phone charging station and a Bluetooth-based local version
of Dropbox, designed to allow off-grid communities to share and store
information in a variety of formats.
Bluetooth Smart, like its
older sibling, may be a relatively straightforward radio wave-based
transmission technology. But as we devise more and more ways to benefit
from ever greater connectivity between the people, other living
organisms, objects and our environments, it seems to be getting smarter
by the day.
