Tait Behind-the-Scenes: The Innovation Room

Biolink Solution, Innovation Room Behind the Scenes Tait CommunicationsThis is the second episode in our behind-the scenes video series, aimed at showing the innovation and passion our people have for critical communications. Watch Episode 1 here Usability Design.

Today we join Tanmay Bhola, a Design Engineer for Tait’s exciting Innovation Room, as he shows us the ins and outs of the creative hub that is his work space.

With Tanmay we learn of the procedures and processes that he and his team undergo with other Tait departments, external sources, and clients to improve the world of critical communications. Tanmay showed us why working in the Innovation Room is so rewarding, and walked us through examples of products like Today’s Fire Danger (Android App) and BioLink, demonstrated how they work, and what they promise for the people we serve.

Watch now and see why the Innovation Room certainly lives up to its name:
Stay tuned for more!

If you have any questions for Tanmay or Evan about the Tait Innovation room please comment below! We would love to hear from you.

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Full Video Transcript:
Evan Forester: So let’s just get this straight. I talk to the camera and then I talk to him, and then he looks to me. Alex on Camera: He pretends the camera is not here.
Evan: Okay, when I’m talking, but I talk to him, and I listen to him. Okay, got it. It’s too bad we missed that conversation again.

Evan: Hello everyone, and welcome to the second episode of Behind the Scenes at Tait. Today I’m here with Tanmay Bhola and we are in the innovation room. Tanmay how are ya?
Tanmay: Not too bad, thanks.
Evan: Excellent. And Tanmay will you tell us a little bit about what happens in this great room we call the Innovation Room?

Tanmay: Cool. So this space is really just a focus area for a whole bunch of co-creation that takes place at Tait, so it’s happening all over the show, but we make sure that you know, this is the focal point. We talk to a lot of external people such as clients, our partners, and even the university, and we work with them on ideas that help solve their needs. And also internally we work with usability design. So you saw Rodney last time. He is here a lot of the time. And then with marketing and engineering to take some of those concepts that you know, we come up with across the company, into products and solutions.

Evan: Well would you mind showing us around and just letting us see a little bit about what you do, and maybe some of the things you are working on?
Tanmay: Yea, no worries.
Evan: So Tanmay, there’s quite a few things here that we can’t show people because it’s top secret and is still in development right?
Tanmay: Yup.
Evan: Like this thing for instance that you can’t see is actually a radio that will freshen your breath while you talk into it.
Tanmay: Uh, no that’s not quite right but. . .
Evan: Well, maybe it’s an idea for next time. Tanmay, why on earth would we want a soundproof room?

Tanmay: So this room is used for a lot of testing on the audio solutions that we work on. So you know, things like testing a whole bunch of our accessories, our designs that drive the future of noise cancelling.
Evan: You can see how it would affect the audio quality and why it’s important to test the audio clarity on things like this for someone who is actually in the field. What is your favorite part of working in the innovation room?
Tanmay: I guess it is collaboration, because I really like talking to clients and understanding what’s the real need behind the products that I’m going to design. And that gives me the motivation to work on these things. The way we work here is don’t just do a launch of a product and say that this is done. What we really do is we have a co-creation phase where we work with the clients and then you know, see them use it, and then that really keeps driving the work forward.

Evan: Really the innovation room is kind of a hub where different people from different parts of the organization and outside of the organization can come together, share ideas, make those ideas crash together to create even better ideas, and create cool products.
Tanmay: So one of the examples is BioLink that is addressing the problem of health and safety and public safety and utilities environments.
Evan: Yup.
Tanmay: So it’s all about getting the vital signs of a person through to the people who care about it.

Evan: So how does it work? I’ve got this guy here, and what does this do?
Tanmay: So this is a product from one of our partners, like I said, they come through this room, so Zephyr designed the sensor and what we’ve done is we’ve taken the sensor and we get all this information that it’s capturing such as the firefighters heart rate, stress levels, you know, breathing rate and temperature, and send that over the radio network that they are already using to the person who cares about it who is the health and safety officer or the incident commander.

Evan: Yea. So does it actually work? Like, could I put this on?
Tanmay: Yup.
Evan: Really?
Tanmay: Yup. It’s a ready product now.
Evan: Alright. Can we do it?
Tanmay: Yup. Sure.

Evan: Okay, so Tanmay, I have my bio harness here and what is this device doing?
Tanmay: Yup. So it’s sensing all your parameters like heart rate, breathing rate, and your core body temperature, and also if you’re standing or fallen over, or if you’re moving or not moving. So it’s capturing all that.
Evan: It can actually monitor my location as well? Is that right?
Tanmay: Yes, that’s off our radio.
Evan: What happens if I do fall over? Can I do that? Lets see what happens.
Tanmay: Just lie down.
Evan: One of the feautures of BioLink is if I fall over, it automatically sends an alarm. It’s kind of cool actually I feel like I’m in Star Trek or something. How many people would you say influence BioLink?
Tanmay: I would say at least 50.
Evan: Yea, so lots of people working together to make this solution what it is today. And are people able to get this for their organizations now?
Tanmay: O yeah. It’s for sale now and they can get the whole kit and set it up and work with it.
Evan: Very cool, so the future is upon us. Thank you so much for showing us around the innovation room Tanmay, and looking forward to seeing what you guys do in the future. So we’ll see you guys next time on behind the scenes.

Comments

  1. Ken Marment says:

    Very impressive ! Well done

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