Pop-up emergency networks for rural Australia

If you ever get stuck in the Australian Outback, chances are that you won’t have any mobile coverage.

Around 5 million km² (over 65% of the country) receives no mobile signal and, in times of emergency, this can of course be incredibly dangerous. However, odds are that you may be driving a Toyota LandCruiser — or someone not too far away will be. The car maker’s focus on delivering tough and durable handling for rugged and unforgiving environments has made this brand one of rural Australia’s most popular four-wheel drives, selling more LandCruisers per capita than anywhere else in the world.

Taking advantage of this market penetration is Saatchi & Saatchi in partnership with Flinders University. The two are pioneering a new device that can be fitted in Toyota LandCruisers, enabling them to create a pop-up emergency network that will bring communications to the most remote parts of the outback. They call this the LandCruiser Emergency Network (LEN).

“The marrying of communications technology and the LandCruiser, a vehicle that has a long history in the outback, presents a huge opportunity for us to provide much-needed infrastructure to remote communities around Australia,” said Brad Cramb, divisional manager, national marketing, Toyota.

The device has been engineered using a mix of Wi-Fi, UHF and delay-tolerant networking (DTN) technology — which is increasingly being looked into, including by NASA for interplanetary communications — to turn vehicles into communications hotspots, each with up to a 25 km range. Since August 2015, the technology has been part of a pilot in a fleet of LandCruisers fitted with the device in the remote Flinders Ranges, South Australia.

Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen from Flinders University commented: “Humanitarian technologies aren’t just something nice to have; they all too often end up being the difference between life and death… It is hard to conceive of a more robust and extensive support network for Outback Australia than the collective LandCruiser drivers of this country.”

Following the formal announcement of the project at Toyota’s National Dealership Meeting in April, Toyota said it is currently exploring the feasibility of a commercial vehicular rollout of the LEN devices.

To learn more about how this new technology works, check out the video below.

Image courtesy of anniemullinsuk under CC-BY-2.0