Two professors at Drexel University have created a revolutionary tracking device for its campus police-a portable communication system that gives officers a map updated with the locations of other officers, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Associate Professor of Computer Science William C. Regli and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Moshe Kam, assisted by more than 20 undergraduate and graduate students, developed the technology, called DragonForce in honor of Drexel's mascot, to allow for better coordination between members of the force.

Each officer carries a device that is similar in appearance to a PDA, which displays a digital map of the campus, their location and the location of other officers. This information is also available to a central dispatcher, who can track officers' positions as precisely as the floor of a building by using a combination of wireless Internet sensors and global positioning satellites. The dispatcher can then communicate with the officers and draw lines on the digital map which the officers can see in the field.

According to The Chronicle, Regli calls this technology "the John Madden-type interface," due to its resemblance to the way the television football commentator draws lines on the screen to illustrate points. Some features, such as voice-communication and data-entry, are still being perfected. Drexel's campus police department is employing the device in order to test the technology.

Bernard Gollotti, Drexel's senior associate vice president for public safety, told The Chronicle that officers have responded well to the introduction of the new system, though its capabilities, more suited for a major crime than for day-to-day campus concerns, have not been fully put to the test. Gollotti, however, said that the devices have helped officers coordinate their actions more quickly.

DragonForce is also being marketed to police forces outside of the university and even the military. Though the system operates on the campus using the university's wireless Internet network, it could also be operated by radio waves, giving it the capability for use in remote locations. Drexel President Constantine N. Papadakis has reported that the government has expressed interest in the technology for both military and police use. The Department of Public Safety in Atlantic County, N.J., has received $330,000 in federal funds to begin using the technology this summer, according to The Chronicle.

In addition, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Lockheed Martin Corporation have planned to test the devices for military use in Iraq and Afghanistan this summer, according to Papadakis. He was confident that these groups would find the technology useful. "Allowing people to track each other on a digital map-it opens a huge amount of possibilities," he said. "This technology has so much application."