THE ADVENTURE GAME

Dodging ice flows and polar bears, Fujitsu Services used the North Pole as a testing ground for PDA-based mobile communications

The Polar Challenge is one of one of the toughest races in the world. It covers 320 miles and finishes at the magnetic North Pole. Crossing the Arctic landscape with temperatures plunging as low as minus 45 degrees Celsius is no easy task. This year seven teams competed in the race, which was sponsored by Fujitsu Services. Team Fujitsu, along with the six others, left the UK early in April this year, and the team members reached the magnetic North Pole on 28 April, 2004. They were the first to arrive, winning the competition.

As race sponsors, as well as sponsors of one of the teams, Fujitsu Services wanted to do a little more than simply bankroll the race and get publicity out of it. They knew that the usual method of communications between race teams and backup staff was satellite phones, but these placed tough demands on race teams as satellite times and connections could frequently be unreliable.

The solution seemed obvious: to provide their team with mobile communications equipment that would reduce reliance on the satellite system by allowing the composing of communications at any time, with the satellite needed only for uploading and receiving messages. This would mirror the types of services Fujitsu provided on an everyday basis when designing, building and operating IT systems and services for more mundane business environments.

STRATEGY

The solution, then, was to provide each of the three team members (Rob Lewis, Chris McCloud and Paul ‘Seamus’ Hogan) with Fujitsu Siemens Pocket LOOX 610 Pocket PCs to use for all data communications, including emails to and from home and family, and vital progress reporting during the competition.The basic specifications of the LOOX 610s were enhanced so that they had extra battery life (essential iven the cold conditions and the race duration), a 32MB Secure Digital card with a full system backup for disaster recovery, and a CompactFlash card with a high speed serial cable to connect to a satellite phone so that data communications could take place.

The data connection had to be configured and tested specifically for the challenge, but all the other equipment was standard ‘off the shelf’ fare, as Tony Gale, Technical Solution Lead at Fujitsu Services, who oversaw the IT side of things, points out. “We made a deliberate decision to choose standard equipment rather than produce anything special. We wanted to show that our equipment was very robust, of course, and we felt that if it could perform in the Arctic, using standard software and hardware, then it could perform pretty much anywhere,” he says.

DEVELOPMENT

“So to that end,” continues Gale, “our only concession to specially produced equipment for the team was the configuration of a serial link to connect the satellite phones to the PDAs – we had to produce that ourselves as there was nothing commercially available.

“We wrote some software for the PDAs using Visual Studio .Net, which allowed for easy reporting of regularly collected types of information using a simplified drop-down menu. We felt it was important to offer the team this, as it saved on the amount of time and would be easy to use – they had without worrying about reporting too.

“We used OpenHand’s wireless email solution to facilitate low bandwidth communications, which is something we use in our normal business life. And back at our Mobile Working Lab in Manchester, which is where we test and work on our solutions, data communications were supported by our usual Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 setup.”

UP AND RUNNING

The technical support team faced one particular challenge not normally encountered in everyday working environments – extreme cold shortened battery life and made it difficult to charge the cells. Without power the LOOXs were useless, so a way had to be found to charge them.

Technical support specialist John Bamber, a staff member at Fujitsu Services who had won an internal contest to support the team on the ice, came up with a solution. John is a echnical engineer more normally based in Lancashire. He worked out a way of ensuring the LOOX batteries were as warm as possible during charging, thereby maximising the efficiency of the generators which were carried as part of the equipment of the support team. This was crucial, as fuel for the generators had to be precisely measured and could not be wasted.

In fact, the LOOX batteries performed surprisingly well. Seamus Hogan, one member of Team Fujitsu, noted that his own MP3 player, he had taken along on the trip to provide light relief from the mental and physical strain, was reduced to around half an hour’s battery life between charges because of the cold, and other equipment, such as camcorders and digital cameras, also suffered.

No technology is any use at all in conditions like those at the Arctic if it breaks down, and at one point one of the LOOXs spent a couple of hours in the snow. It was thought that it would not recover from this, as temperatures as low as minus 45 degrees would surely be enough to stop the LOOX from ever working again. But after a slow process of bringing the hardware back to an acceptable temperature, it did eventually power up, and even better, a complete image of the device’s contents was restored from the provided SD card. The use of the LOOX for communications proved to be more effective than a satellite phone might have been. The latter relies on voice communications and, for Seamus at least, email was preferable for personal communications: “The mental strain during the race was great, and I needed to focus on getting through it. My wife Sophie had a baby just before I left for the race, and talking to her would have been emotionally very difficult for me. With email I was able to write messages to Sophie when I was ready to do so, not simply when there was a satellite link available, and that helped me stay mentally focussed.”

WHATEVER NEXT?

Fujitsu Services saw their Polar Challenge experience as a real success. “The equipment worked very well, and the problems which were experienced out there were all fixed to the satisfaction of Team Fujitsu,” says Tony.

He and Seamus agree on some things it would be good to do next time around. These include using a GPS built into the LOOX to automatically record the locations of the team at different times, so that their support teams would be aware of their progress. And on what may seem a slightly less practical note, Seamus would also have liked to use the music playing facility on the LOOX – whose battery lasted a whole lot better than that on his own MP3 player. As he explains: “It’s a real mental challenge as much as a physical one out there, and music was one of my ways of easing the mental pressure.”

HARDWARE & SOFTWARE USED
Fujitsu Siemens Pocket Loox 610

www.fujitsu-siemens.co.uk  

Specially written software for Pocket Loox
Microsoft Exchange 2003 back office environment

www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/overview  

OpenHand wireless email
www.openhand-mobile.com  

IRIDIUM satellite phone - Motorola 9505

www.stargate3.co.uk  

About Fujitsu Services

Fujitsu Services designs, builds and operates IT systems and services for customers in
the financial services, telecom, retail, utilities and government markets. It is one of the
leading IT services companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. With an annual
turnover of £1.74bn (2.58bn), it employs 14,500 people and operates in over 20 countries. Headquartered in London, Fujitsu Services is the European-centred IT services arm
of the Fujitsu Group. The Fujitsu Group is a US$45bn (37bn) leader in customer-focused
IT systems and services for the global marketplace.