Car 54 takes to the water: Marine Patrol to get test boat from UNH
DURHAM — The New Hampshire Marine Patrol will test new technology in Portsmouth Harbor this year that will give officers voice control of lights, radar and sirens, as well as a streamlined navigation system that will plot paths around underwater hazards.
The University of New Hampshire's Project 54, a team of researchers that designed a similar system for police cruisers, will outfit a test boat with the technology in the next few weeks, according to William Lenharth, a research professor at the school.
Lenharth said that Marine Patrol officers will wear a headset that will allow them to communicate with other officers and feed voice commands into a computer. The technology will provide hands-free control over the electrical functions of the boat, as well as the ability to run background checks, get directions, and coordinate with other boats in the area.
Project 54 was started in 1999 to design voice-control systems for police vehicles. The team received a $4-million-dollar federal grant and has installed systems in more than 1,000 cruisers in New Hampshire and other states that provide many of the same voice functions.
According to Lenharth, one difficult part of modifying the technology for a marine environment was compensating for background noise. He hopes that using headsets will cut out the rumble of engines and crash of ocean waves. Waterproofing the equipment has also been a concern for the team, but designers encountered the problem in the past while installing devices on motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles