Coldplay fans who went to the Rock Werchter festival in Belgium this weekend had to run the gauntlet of an experimental Bluetooth tracking system that kept an eye on their every move, it has been revealed by online tech sites.
Visitors to the Rock Werchter event North East of Brussels, which ends on Sunday, will be monitored through the Bluetooth signals from their mobile phones in an effort to analyse crowd behaviour. Researchers from the University of Ghent have installed 36 scanners across the festival site with the goal of developing new sat-nav and security applications by better understanding human movement over time.
One of the team explained a retail scenario: "Tracking movements via Bluetooth could become very interesting. It could help retailers keep track of the number of customers at different times."
However it's nothing personal - the 80,000 festival goers need not be worried about their privacy, as the scanners track only phones' network addresses and not their numbers or other identifying details. "Werchter is a very interesting case," the university's Nico Van de Weghe told Reuters, adding that this is the first time his team, working on a wider research project using new technology to track moving objects, will collect full data on a live situation.
The team is carrying out research on geographical information systems, such as satellite navigation systems, and is hoping to be able to track moving objects in real time. "Tracking movements via Bluetooth could become very interesting. It could help retailers keep track of the number of customers numbers at different times, " Van de Weghe said.
The technique could also be used by security services to track suspicious movements, or monitor evacuations at mass events. Some 80,000 people from across Europe attended a sweltering first day of the festival in the small town of Werchter, 40 km (25 miles) northeast of Brussels, on Thursday, with thousands more expected on Friday and over the weekend.
Coldplay at Rock Werchter Festival, Belgium (3rd July 2009):
Pictures by purefm @ Flickr
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