Distributed Instruments

Distributed Instruments was focused on solving the challenges of sensor data fusion. worked with the US Army, US Air Force, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, IBM, the Eclipse Foundation and the Open Geospatial Consortium to develop sensor data fusion technology.

We ran a joint live mission with our technology at Super Bowl XL in Detroit, MI with the FBI, Michigan State Police, Michigan Army National Guard and US Department of Energy. Our platform enabled all four security agencies to share live sensor data to detect nuclear, biological and chemical threats.

Some of the results of our work were shared as open source projects:

• Service Oriented Device Architecture
• Transducer Markup Language
• Sensor Markup Language

You can find more in the writings section of this site.

Distributed Instruments was working in the defence sector during the height of the War on Terror. Other interesting projects included:

• High altitude airships. DI was investigating HAA for the US Army. We took a very different approach from others such as Lockheed. We ran successful tests that enabled sub-watt communication to extend from Ohio to Georgia. Engineers on the project went on to be key participants in Google's Loon Project.

• Plastic armored vehicle. We helped create a prototype plastic armor and a novel armored vehicle design with US Army Tank Automotive Command, Navistar and Blackwater.