Student's GPS-enabled baton on Antarctic voyage
Matt
Silver, a MEng Electronic Engineering with Space Science and Technology student, has spent
his summer developing a GPS-enabled baton that will travel the world raising awareness of the
reality of life for service personnel and their families in the British Armed Forces.
This is the primary mission of charity The Baton, which uses the handle of a military stretcher
that was brought back from Camp Bastion, Afghanistan in 2009 as its symbol. One of the charity’s
trustees, WO Barry Gray RM decided he wanted to take the baton and its message with him on his
latest expedition - a re-enactment of Shackleton’s history-making 1916 Antarctic voyage, which will
use 1916 technology, food and equipment to recreate the legendary journey, which has never been
successfully repeated.
Matt had been working on a GPS-related project during the third year of his course and so he
was asked if he’d be willing to take on the challenge. His goal was to fit an electronic device
inside the stretcher handle turned baton, to enable it to be tracked via the GPS.
The baton has previously been on expeditions to the Himalayan mountaintops and the North Pole
amongst others. The hope is to be able to not only track and record this expedition, but many
others in the future.
Find out more on the
IET website.
