The Tranquilizer as Arrived

Avanzit announced the availability for 2007 to track kids, Alzheimer patient, dogs, cars and so on. Coined by El Pais as the Tranqulizor the device (a flat card) developed by Navento pretends of a positioning accuracy of 1m with GPS and a long-lasting battery. It can be embedded into a mobile phone. If not, I am not sure how the data are transmitted to a central server (supposedly via GSM module).

The tracked persons or artifacts can be monitored from a online map. When coverage is lost, the device is located with the position of its last signal. Dot are used to represent the movement; red if continuous, blue if slow and yellow if stopped.

The service should be available worldwide, with a starting price of 100EUR. The press release.

Via Daniel Kaplan

Relation to my thesis: Engineers gone wild. It is not the first tracking system used on kids or animals (e.g. dogs and caddles), assets, objects and fleets. However, the use cases of this service described by Avanzit’s representatives are rather stunning:

“Se puede utilizar a través del móvil o del ordenador y tener multitud de usos: por ejemplo, con él se podría defender a las mujeres maltratadas de sus agresores”

It can be used via a mobile phone or a computer and have multiple uses: For example, mistreated women could defend themselves from their aggressors.

“El Ejército de EE UU, por ejemplo, que a veces no sabe dónde no tiene sus armas y tanques en Irak, podría conocer la posición exacta de su armamento con esta tecnología”

The US army in Irak, for example, could know the exact position of the weapons and tanks they often lose.