Uploaded September 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
If you had come into the Department in the early 1990s, you would have found everyone here wearing a little grey plastic square called an ‘active badge’. These were very early mobile devices that transmitted and received in the infrared space. Infrared sensors installed in the building could sense where badge wearers were, giving an accurate picture of who was where in the building. (A bit like the Marauder’s Map in Harry Potter!). This was pioneering work in location sensing and tracking technology, as the active badge project's leader, Professor Sir Andy Hopper, explains here. He is followed by Professor Cecilia Mascolo who tells us about her research into how small, mobile, wearable sensors – such as the earbuds we wear with our mobile phones – could be used to tracking and monitor our health and wellbeing.
If you had come into the Department in the early 1990s, you would have found everyone here wearing a little grey plastic square called an ‘active badge’. These were very early mobile devices that transmitted and received in the infrared space. Infrared sensors installed in the building could sense where badge wearers were, giving an accurate picture of who was where in the building. (A bit like the Marauder’s Map in Harry Potter!). This was pioneering work in location sensing and tracking technology, as the active badge project's leader, Professor Sir Andy Hopper, explains here. He is followed by Professor Cecilia Mascolo who tells us about her research into how small, mobile, wearable sensors – such as the earbuds we wear with our mobile phones – could be used to tracking and monitor our health and wellbeing.
