Little 500 to try tech upgrade this year

Watching the 2005 Little 500 inspired senior Wes Michaels. \nThe whole race was timed manually. And while Michaels said the timing system wasn't flawed, he thought it might be interesting to test a new technology system -- radio frequency identification tags.\nRFID technology is often used in the corporate community to track supply shipments. It's also increasingly used to time triathlons. The technology consists of a tag, a reader and an antenna that can provide detailed timing data. Michaels and some friends from the School of Informatics began questioning the possibility of using this new technology to track Little 500 racers. It seemed like the perfect Capstone project, a requirement for all students graduating from the School of Informatics.\nA group of friends held an ad hoc meeting after last year's race. All summer, the friends exchanged ideas. Two weeks into the school year, the School of Informatics approved the project -- iCycle. Seniors Sara Fluhr, Jonathan Feigle, William Woods, and two Little 500 riders Jordan Martz and Gary Shoulders joined the project. \nTogether they outlined a design in which the RFID tags, which look like one-by-three inch stickers, are placed on the middle of the rider's helmet. The antenna and tag reader are stationed on a pole sitting about five feet above riders' heads. Each loop the rider makes at Bill Armstrong stadium is recorded.\nLast semester, iCycle members approached the IU Student Foundation for approval -- no easy feat. Lucas Calhoun, Little 500 race coordinator, said the foundation "very rarely" approves new relationships with such student projects.\n"We're truly putting them through a rigorous approval process," Calhoun said.\nThe group has high hopes for the possibilities of RFID technology. Michaels said the RFID tags could prove useful for both spectators and riders in the future. Eventually, the technology could allow far-flung fans to track their favorite team via the Web. Riders could use the information to view their times on each lap, an indicator of individual endurance and therefore key information for teams' coaches.\nWith the current timing system, Michaels said it would take a substantial amount of manual work to obtain concrete data and statistics equivalent to RFID.\nCalhoun is also optimistic about the project. But his primary concern is that the tags control all the information, and they are on the individual rider's helmet so if a rider falls down, the reading will stop.\n"We can't have a lack of timing happen because of something like that," he said.\nFeigle insists that the tags can withstand substantial damage. To test the tags' durability, the team cut the tags in half, submerged them in water, stomped on them with a shoe and ran over them with a car. None of these experiments resulted in an unreadable tag, he said. \nSince this is the first year RFID technology will be used, Calhoun said the benefits are restricted. But, he said the project and technology carry tremendous potential. \n"This is something that could be developed over four to five years," he said.\nICycle members agree. But this year, project coordinators said they just hope the new technology works. \n"We're really exploring the boundaries," Shoulders said. \nThe project is limited to tracking five teams during this year's men's race. The IUSF has yet to decide which teams.