MH370 Hunt: IoT Sharks with Laser Beams?

MH370 and Crowdsourced Sharks with Laser Beams?

The disappearance of MH Flight 370 has revealed a major gap in the Internet of Things: most of the world is water and lacks decent broadband coverage due to the ocean’s relative inability to transmit radio waves. Austin Powers fans will recall Dr. Evil’s obsession for “Sharks with Laser Beams” and we’ll see what MH370 has to do with them in a bit.

Crowdsourcing rapid technological innovation in emergencies

During the hunt for the plane, innovative technological solutions were crowdsourced that later were used in the investigation (perhaps through independent discovery by very qualified experts or perhaps as result of the crowdsourced suggestions). Proposals such as using the doppler shift to fine-tune the Inmarsat data, combine Inmarsat data with radar data, and use military antisubmarine sonar buoys were all proposed in online forums, days or even weeks before they were official announced by investigators as novel techniques used in the investigation. Many very good suggestions also were not used (perhaps because they were technically infeasible) such as checking weather satellites for contrails if atmospheric conditions were generating them.

Not every suggestion was serious. One comment we remember buried somewhere half-heartedly suggested attaching tracking telemetry to packs of sharks, whose ability to sniff the depths of the ocean would lead investigators right to MH370, presumably.

Talking Dogs and the Internet of Things

Some futurists think that dogs and cats may someday be connected to the Internet of Things. Some already are. There is the Peter Gabriel-funded non-profit Interspecies Internet. There is Project Fido, a wearable computer that allows working dogs, such as those assisting the blind, to communicate by tugging on special controls. Wearable computing for cats is apparently still wide open but only a matter of time, presumably. Once connecting to the Internet, it may be possible to have simple conversations with dogs of the future. SQUIRREL! (Sorry, we couldn’t resist that reference to the the technology-enabled talking dog of the Pixar movie ‘Up.’)

Sharks with Laser Beams and the Internet of Things

So, aside from the practical dangers of getting eaten alive when attaching the devices, why not include Sharks on the Interspecies Internet of Things? Surely Dr. Evil would approve of such a move? Admittedly, connecting warm & fuzzy aquatic mammals like dolphins, whales, maybe sea lions to the Internet might be a higher priority than that ancient monster fish known as the shark that survived the Cretaceous extinctions (the time when everything else was going the way of the dinos)

Talking Dolphins and the Internet of Things

For starters, unlike sharks, there are currently dolphins, whales, and sea lions that have found employment with humans (and not just at theme parks — there are real-world applications for a trained dolphin or sea lion). We’re not aware of any sharks that have found gainful employment, as apparently they’re difficult to manage. (We’ll resist the obvious lawyer jokes here.)

Also, unlike sharks, dolphins and whales periodically need to surface to breath, at which point you can transmit your telemetry via satellite and maybe even charge up using solar power.  Sharks you may have to wait a long time before transmitting telemetry. In a situation such as the MH370 hunt, where time is of the essence, you want to able to immediately communicate with the shark to ask it if it’s seen the writ of habeas corpus. (OK we did the tasteless shark lawyer joke after all.)

Balloons, Drones and the Internet of Things

This also brings up the remote broadband issue. Both Google and Facebook have solutions for connecting millions of people in remote areas to the Internet. Google wants to launch Internet relay balloons, while Facebook is in talks to buy a solar-powered drone company that can keep an unmanned, autonomous Internet relay drone plane aloft for years over remote areas. But Facebook admits the drones might be too expensive for truly remote areas; the company is considering launching satellites instead to cover these areas. Of course, part of the problem is that the present generation of satellite phone satellites, like Iridiums’ fleet,  do provide global Internet coverage but at a very steep price. [Update 2014/4/14 Google announced today that they had bought Titan Aerospace. This the autonomous drone maker that Facebook had been in negotiations to acquire. It looks like Facebook and Google got into a bidding war for this company, with Google ultimately winning. Instead, Facebook recently hired employees from a UK-based drone maker to join its Connectivity Lab, which will use drones, mesh networks, and … wait for it … laser beams to connect the world’s last billion people to the Internet. No word on whether Facebook Connectivity Lab plans to also use sharks with their laser beams and mesh networks.]

You may recall that part of the reason the flight’s final coordinates are a mystery is that, to cut costs, Malaysian Airlines did not subscribe to the full Inmarsat satellite service, which would have periodically transmitted full GPS coordinates to Inmarsat. Instead, Inmarsat only got the periodic, minimalist ‘handshake’ communicates, which the airplane and satellite kept alive to make it possible to transmit any data for which a paid subscription channel was available. Having better global satellite Internet options would made it much less expensive for the plane to transmit data continuously (including, as some have suggested, a larger chunk of the information currently stored on the black box.) This might make a fleet of Internet-connected sharks much less necessary.

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