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Device helps blind navigate – GPS satellites track Badlands coyote population

February 17, 2004 /

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Sitting in Gwennie’s Restaurant in Spenard, Jim King, who has been blind since youth, took an imaginary tour of downtown Anchorage.

A metallic voice from an electronic device the size of a spiral notebook on the table informed King he was at G Street and Third Avenue, his chosen starting point.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2004-02-17-gps-audio-map_x.htm

King’s fingers worked a small keyboard. A voice told him he was at E Street and Third Avenue. A few more keys, and he was heading south, to Fourth Avenue. He kept to E Street and reached Ninth Avenue, then turned west along the Delaney Park Strip toward his goal of L Street and Ninth Avenue.

"We’re at our destination. Isn’t that cool?" King said. "I love it."

The $2,000 machine, in King’s estimation, is a giant step forward in helping the blind to live full lives. Called the VoiceNote GPS, the device combines computer technology, including digital voicing, with the global positioning system device, which allows a person to pinpoint his or her location. The device, in essence, makes an audio map.

"I can record a route," he said. "I can walk from one location to another location, and as I go along the way, I can record certain critical points in the route, and the next time I walk that route, the VoiceNote will tell me how close I am and tell me how I’m progressing."

King now is using the machine while heading to Nome on the National Iditarod Trail.

He and seven other people, calling themselves the Alaskan Express Freight Sled Expedition, are taking snowmobiles to Nome as a promotion for both the VoiceNote GPS device and a nonprofit educational organization called the Iditarod National Millennium Trail.

The team expects to reach Nome sometime around Feb. 23, said Ron Arnold, director of the Iditarod National Millennium Trail and organizer of the expedition.

Sitting on the back of a snowmobile driven by another person, King is continuously recording his position through a GPS device and storing the data on his VoiceNote.

The VoiceNote comes with a five-gigabyte hard drive, according to King. It can store a multitude of GPS coordinates — for downtown Anchorage, for example, and other cities and points of interest, and for the Iditarod Trail.

The coordinates can be uploaded to a database or Web site.

"Blind people will be able to do the Iditarod from their living rooms," King said. He owns electronic GPS maps of the entire United States

"This is not a replacement or a substitute for a cane or a guide dog," King said. But in the hands of a blind man, the VoiceNote can act like a dog to guide him along a chosen route, squawking out his current location if he gets lost or simply chooses to wander.

"This is analogous to a PDA," or personal digital assistant, King told the Anchorage Daily News.

The VoiceNote GPS device is made by Pulse Data HumanWare, a New Zealand company specializing in tools for the blind and people with low vision. King, a big, gregarious man, had followed development of the VoiceNote and tested one of its first prototypes.

"I knew I liked it before I got it," he said. He also owns a $3,500 model that can print read-outs in Braille.

The specialized keyboard on the VoiceNote works on the Braille system. The machine does not accept voice input. The output, however, can be in voice or in other forms of data.

The Alaskan Express Freight Sled Expedition expects to visit a couple dozen villages on the way to Nome. While in the villages, King has been demonstrating the VoiceNote.

Children are particularly excited by the device, said Jerry Cashman, a spokesman for Pulse Data, the manufacturer. The group was near Galena on Friday.

"He’s taking all sorts of recordings, and the equipment is doing very well" in the cold, Cashman said.

After the journey, other travelers, sighted or blind, will be able to take the same trip, he said.

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BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK, S.D. (AP) — Scientists hope to use satellite-based technology to help them better estimate the coyote population of Badlands National Park.

Wildlife biologists have fitted 10 coyotes with radio collars equipped with global-positioning system receivers, which use satellite transmissions to pinpoint an animal’s location to within a few feet.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-02-16-coyote-gps_x.htm

Doug Albertson and colleague Greg Schroeder will collar half a dozen more coyotes this year.

Others already have studied the "relative density" of coyotes along certain game trails and vehicle tracks in the park. Their research suggests there are more coyotes per square mile in Badlands National Park than anywhere in South Dakota. Albertson said that makes sense intuitively, because the park is one of the few places where coyotes cannot be hunted.

Now, Albertson and Schroeder hope to combine the findings on relative densities with GPS data to get a clearer picture of the coyote population.

They still won’t have a census number, Albertson said, but he added, "That’s what we’re working toward."

The three-year, $48,000 study also will help determine reproduction rates, survival rates and the locations and sizes of home ranges.

Home-range data will be immediately useful. The park is working with the state of South Dakota to reintroduce swift foxes to the wild. Coyotes tend to dominate the smaller foxes, so placing them where there aren’t coyotes increases the chances of success.

Radio transmissions from the collars can give biologists general locations for the animals, but data from the GPS units must be collected from the collars themselves, which are programmed to automatically open and drop off in the fall.

When the collars drop off, they start emitting a different radio signal, which scientists can track.

GPS data already collected last fall show that coyotes are very territorial, but occasionally they hit the road. One GPS unit showed that a young coyote had strayed 52 miles north before returning to the park.