“LOOK MOM NO ELECTRICITY.” That was the first message conveyed by a rudimentary new communication system that researchers are calling the “infofuse.” In a new study, researchers printed patterns of three different flammable metallic salts on a nitrocellulose fuse and then set the fuse on fire. As it burned, it emitted pulses of different colored light that can be interpreted with a Morse code system.
In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers explain that they developed a code for the alphabet, numbers and four special characters (a full-stop, comma, exclamation mark and the “@” sign) based on the presence or absence of one of the three metals in each dot. Extra coding information comes from the length of the dot, which determines the duration with which it burns, and the space between dots, where no colour is produced [New Scientist]. They placed dots of the three metals–lithium, rubidium, and caesium–on the paper using an ordinary ink-jet printer. When the infofuse was set alight, its precise patterns were “read” by an optical detector.
The researchers developed the infofuses in response to a call from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for technologies to allow soldiers stranded without a power source to communicate. DARPA wanted “something that doesn’t require any electronics or heavy equipment to lug around” [Technology Review], says study coauthor David Walt.
But it’s not just military types who could find a use for the infofuses; they could come in handy in all sorts of emergencies, says study coauthor Samuel Thomas. “We think it could be of use as a type of signal flare…. When people are stranded, regular flares only give you a couple of options: ‘I’m in trouble’; ‘I’m OK’,” says Thomas. “Infofuses could be used to transmit a more informative message such as, ‘How many people are there?’ and ‘We are hurt’” [New Scientist].
Image: George Whitesides
May 27th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
I can’t see these infofuses being all that useful in an emergency. First, you have to carry them premade…it isn’t likely you’ll be making them on the spot. That means you have to carry a number of them all with precoded messages (seriously injured need medicine, injured need extraction etc).
Secondly, there are numerous other way to transmit information. Radios, satellite phones, cell phones (if service), light signals (morse code with lamps, flashlights, fires, sunlight and mirrors), semaphore signals, distress signals (coloured cloth), dye markers, and flare series.
On ships the number of people on board is already known and registered so even if all you received was a microburst radio distress signal (or a flare) you know the ship is in trouble and you know how many people are on board. Emergency rescue operations would already be equipped with what you might need.
Using infofuses already presupposes someone is looking/has detectors that will notice the information. No point in sending off infofuses if no-one is there to record the colours. If a passing vessel/person sees the infofuse they’ll just see bright coloured lights. In that case, why not use flares? Flares, by the way, can be used to transmit information (aside from Help, Here We Are) if they’re done with timed bursts or in colours (red-blue-green flares may signal Urgent Medical Aid needed)….not that doing that is necessary…if a ship sends up a flare (assuming all radios, cell/sat phones, smoke dyes, lights don’t work) then search and rescue groups are coming in as fast as they can regardless.
I suspect the inventors enthusiasm for the applications of their work may stem from a lack of knowledge about current signaling devices as well as search and rescue practices. From a military aspect, I’m not sure this is what DARPA is looking for. If you need to communicate with another group using infofuses this means that anyone in the area (friend and foe) can see this light display. But my background isn’t military so my lack of knowledge there may be blinding me to something obvious (as the inventors seem to have done for their emergency scenarios).
Still, pretty cool ideas, and I’d be interested to see if this does find a useful place. Maybe we’ll be seeing it in movies in the next little while (satellites are on the look out for the hero’s signal. The hero lights an infofuse (he has no electronics, it is night so no sun to reflect light messages) detailing the location of hostages, and the specialist team and flying drones are deployed immediately. Of course, why he would be carrying the equipment/chemicals to make an infofuse and not the communication equipment is another story),
May 28th, 2009 at 1:36 am
What a well thought out comment Mariane!
May 28th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Mariane said everything that needs to be said. It’s a neat trick but redundant.
May 28th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Mariane, the below Slashdot article addresses some of your confusion regarding what DARPA is looking for (note: without a power source) and the preliminary stage of this research…they are still “trying to figure out a way to dynamically encode a message on the fly in the field without specialized equipment.” We shouldn’t assume the researchers intend for this process to immediately be used in emergencies or on the battlefield. It’s just part one.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/26/1851207&from=rss:
“Researchers at Harvard and Tufts University have developed a way to send coded messages without using electricity. David Walt, professor of chemistry at Tufts, and Harvard’s George Whitesides have developed ‘infofuses’ that can transmit information simply by burning. The fuses — metallic salts depositing on a nitrocellulose strand — emit pulses of infrared and visible light of different colors whose sequence encodes information. They were developed in response to a call from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for technologies to allow soldiers stranded without a power source to communicate. In the first demonstration of the idea, they used the infofuses to transmit the message look mom no electricity.” Currently the researchers are “trying to figure out a way to dynamically encode a message on the fly in the field without specialized equipment.”
May 28th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Thank you, Rachel (and thank you Lisette and Torres for your kind words). I imagine many technologies in their infancy have suffered from the “But what can it really do?” question. If this technology isn’t useful in the way they thought it may turn out to have applications that no-one has thought of yet. I know there are examples of this as I’ve read about them, but, dear me, think I can come up with one off the top of my head now? :-)
I initially thought hand-held lasers would be a good way for soldiers to communicate if they wanted to avoid radio transmissions. However, who wants to volunteer to stare at a laser beam to decipher the dots and dashes? Furthermore, even shielded non-blinding flashlight messages can be intercepted and decoded.
The pulses of infrared light though lend themselves to some intriguing possibilities for a more clandestine transfer of information than visible light. You could have the infrared come across as 10x brighter than the visible light…sort of a hidden coded message hidden within an overt coded message. Or, in emergency situations maybe the infrared (or other wavelengths) would be bright enough to register on detectors whereas visible light may be overlooked? Intriguing possibilities, yes….I hope we’ll see (or maybe “not see” if infrared ;-) ) where it does go.
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