Roy Want PhD: Award-Winning Computer Scientist, Google, California
Smart Hospitals Know Where Stuff Is
In a critical healthcare environment, seconds save lives. Yet, hospitals often struggle with a surprisingly basic question: Where exactly are our staff, our patients, and our life-saving equipment? While GPS revolutionized outdoor navigation, the indoor environment has remained a blind spot. Until now…
In this cutting edge talk from one of the world’s great innovators, Roy takes us on a personal journey from Cambridge University to Silicon Valley. He describes his progression from senior research engineer at Olivetti, Intel, and Xerox PARC, to Principal Scientist for the Android group at Google.
Focussing on health settings, Roy reveals how we are overcoming the challenges of indoor positioning. He explains his breakthrough work - using Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology plus Next-Gen WiFi - and how they can be combined with pinpoint precision to create a truly "smart" hospital.
Dr Want holds over 100 patents in mobile computing (Wikipedia). He received the ACM SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contributions Award in 2019, and continues to set global standards for the future of Wi-Fi.
Click here to see Roy’s presentation. A copy of the meeting recording can be found below.
YMS. Description of talk by Dr Roy Want on 24.4.26 - Smart Hospitals Know Where Stuff Is
by Dr Bob Adams
This enthusiastic and expert presentation by Dr Roy Want (Post Grad Cambridge 1988) kept our attention and I for one learnt a lot. Roy, a longstanding friend of our current president, flew all the way from Silicon Valley in California with his wife, just to talk to us in Stonegate. Roy is an expert in developing computer systems, the things that dominate our lives now, and it was valuable to get an insight into what goes on beyond the scenes.
Roy currently works for Google, not an alien invader from Bladerunner, but the multibillion-dollar company that provides the majority of mobile phone systems to the world. He was involved in the creation of the ‘blue dot’ that we see on our phone maps. Roy concentrated his talk on new developments that will be hitting our ‘cell phones’ soon, the ability to find our way inside complex buildings that include hospitals. He explained to us how difficult it is to develop indoor positioning systems (to locate people and hospital equipment eg Zimmer frames) when satellite navigation (GPS) is not available. He outlined how different systems are developed and I understood most of it, apart from the equations. The latter reminded me that to get into medical school it was once necessary to get an ‘A’ level in maths or physics.
We learned about ‘Ping-Pong Protocols’, ‘Radio Time of Flight’ and ‘Time Advance Attacks’. Even calculus was mentioned, first described by Newton and Gauss over 200 years ago to help find the position of planets in space. We were pleased to hear that standards are shared and even Android and Apple speak to each other occasionally. But with new inventions there will always be the bad guys who try to circumvent them. Roy showed us a UK video of thieves trying to steal an expensive car by intercepting remote control systems and then outlined ways of counteracting this. It is a cat and mouse game.
It was especially valuable to learn what life was like in another world, that of Silicon Valley. Whether we like it or not, our life will further be changed by these new developments, and we need to stay ahead of the game. Indoor positioning systems will enable others to track where we are, so it may be necessary to turn off our phones occasionally, especially when we want to escape from a future nursing home! A brave new world indeed. Many thanks to Dr Roy Want for his valuable insights.