July/Aug 2004

It's not just modern vehicles that can benefit from telematics and tracking, as the striking picture below clearly shows. In a wonderful juxtaposition of high-adrenalin and high-tech, a GPS-based tracking system from CSI Wireless has been in use this summer on Canada's chuckwagon racing circuit.

The man behind the idea is "veteran" racer Mark Sutherland (actually he's just 33), who fitted the CSI unit during the annual Calgary Stampede. He'd already been using an off-the-shelf Garmin GPS unit to monitor his speed and analyse the results later, but then CSI got to hear about it, and suggested something more dynamic.

The result was a system in which a CSI Wireless Asset-Link unit was fitted in the wagon (inset), and data was transmitted directly to an antenna-equipped laptop in the Calgary Stampede broadcast booth above the track. From here, spectators could be given exact information on how Sutherland was doing in the race. A similar system was used later at the Klondike Days in Edmonton.

The speeds may not sound much in trucking terms (15mph on the first turn, 32 mph on the back stretch), but we suggest you might want to try it yourself before passing judgement!

 

According to reports in the Edmonton Journal, Sutherland uses the information in various ways to analyse his performance and fine-tune tactics, and would love it if there were some way to go a stage further, and somehow see a display of his speed in real time. (Give it time! Ð Ed.) He says few other drivers have cottoned on to his high-tech concept yet, but odds are that a lot more will do so now.

CSI Wireless produces a variety of tracking, telematics and other wireless devices, including GPS and DGPS units, antennas and composite telematics and fleet management products and software. It has bases in Calgary, Arizona and California.