Smart phones smartening up the force?
Smart phones and tablet pcs could be used by police officers to help solve crimes faster and more cheaply, according to the University of Portsmouth's School of Computing. Rather than relying on centralised computers, the power and wireless features of smartphones could revolutionise crime fighting, according to the School's Dr Mohamed Gaber. Other applications could include mobile healthcare and live business intelligence.
"Imagine police officers equipped with smartphones that can capture all the sensory information in a crime scene such as fingerprints and digital images – all the data could be analysed locally and the results could be fused together in real time to give them some insights and knowledge," claimed. "We have discovered that we can get excellent results with as few as eight mobile phones being used together, where each phone handles a maximum of 40% of the all the possible measurements."
