One of the main items that support the INGENIOUS Smart First Responder concept is the Intelligent Uniform device which is currently under development by TEKNIKER partner.

TEKNIKER is a private non-profit research organization founded in 1981 with near 270 researchers, with relevant background and expertise in supporting the development of embedded hardware and software products for highly demanding applications, from advanced industrial sensors up to mission-critical systems and highly integrated miniaturized devices embedding advanced processing, machine-vision and photonics, IoT communications or multipurpose sensors for heterogeneous applications such as wearables or rugged outdoor standalone industrial solutions.

As Integration leader, TEKNIKER has been supporting and attending the first round of Laboratory Integration Tests where the preliminary developments of the different technology items of the INGENIOUS Next Generation Integrated Toolkit (NGIT) have been demonstrated.

As the main responsible partner for the development of the Smart Uniform concept within INGENIOUS, TEKNIKER together with the partner responsible for the Smart Boots (CYRIC) performed the Lab Test number 3 where the first demonstration of technologies was shown.

The virtual testing demo took place at TEKNIKER premises by using some early prototypes, provided by the involved partners, that enabled realistic testing of a hardware device acting as Intelligent Uniform that was connected to a pair of smart boot hardware prototypes to exchange sampling information through Bluetooth Low Energy communication channel.

The testing session was also remotely supported by CYRIC for some additional live demos with the smart boots.

Although still not in a fully customised hardware shape, the whole solution included also a connection with an additional sensing device acting as a wearable device, and the whole setup offered a very first overview of the information flow (status, connection, raw data) between those smart components.

Not only the local communication between Uniform, Boots and additional wearable devices was tested, but the test also provided a first implementation of the ability of the Uniform device to offer local processing capabilities (e.g. the Boot Edge Software embedded by CyRIC onto the Uniform hardware to process raw signals coming from both boots) and events/alerts/notifications triggering functionality. Finally, a preliminary implementation for remote information exchange to different tools was provided. On one hand, the system was able to generate preliminary examples of message exchanges with the INGENIOUS Fusion Engine, while on the other, an early implementation of the Smart Uniform configuration and remote monitoring dashboard tool was also presented.