BYU industrial design students were commissioned by Motorola to design innovative products that will help police of the future communicate more smoothly in the field.

PROVO - Industrial-design students from Brigham Young University are making good on a challenge from Motorola: Design innovative communication gadgets for cops of the future.

The undergrads showed off their impressive prototypes this week to Motorola brass - creations ranging from portable fingerprint scanners to throwable radios - in hopes of sparking ideas the communications giant someday may produce.

The 25 junior and senior students - trying to anticipate the police needs a few years down the road - designed products that focused on high-tech trends.

"The beat cop of tomorrow is about 14 years old today," said Richard Fry, student adviser and industrial-design professor. "We looked at how the early acceptance of instant messaging and video-game controllers has improved or changed the way people communicate."

Some of the nifty gadgets included a hand-held language device that would audibly translate an officer's voice commands into a different language, a wireless-radio system built into bicycle handlebars and a sleeve that would eliminate the need for heavy hardware.

Student James Kearl - the brains behind the fingerprint scanner allowing cops to fingerprint suspects and ID them at the scene - hopes his innovation will someday translate into real-life use.

"It just seems like all police want it," Kearl said. "Someone just has to make it."

The likelihood of Kearl's idea or any other student's innovation making it into Motorola design labs is "rare - if ever," said Motorola master innovator Scott Richards. But that doesn't mean it's impossible.

A similar student project BYU did for Motorola in the 1990s helped generate the concept behind the company's high-tech TalkAbout walkie-talkie.

BYU students also have worked with Nokia in recent years.

"[The students] tend to have their hands on the pulse of new technology," Richards said. "Their ideas are pretty fresh."

With the focus on improving technology for police - a group the students rarely associate with - the project required serious hands-on research.

Students not only had in-depth conversations with law-enforcement officers, but also followed them around and, in some cases, even jumped into patrol vehicles.

"That's not a group that we understand very well on the surface," Fry said.

"That's what industrial design is all about: stepping outside your own circle of influence and finding out what other people do."

Josh Farnworth, the student behind the "Smartbar" wireless-radio handlebar, agrees.

"It's not what you're making," he said, "but just enjoying the process."

thollingshead@sltrib.com