Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

https://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2024/06/lifesaving-robots-arrive-on-lake-michigan-beaches-to-prevent-drownings.html

by rmason • 2 years ago

99 118 2 years ago

mlive.com

cespare• 2 years ago

https://archive.is/Kal3q

tamimio• 2 years ago

Thank you! I got a “disable your adblocker” blocker..

akira25013• 2 years ago

I'm not sure thinking of the robots as "increasing safety" is a useful mindset. They increase the chance of rescue. If you needed one in the first place, it's because you unintentionally neglected safety well before they deployed the robot to you.

Anyways.. as an aside.. if it's just about getting flotation devices out to them faster, why not a "life jacket cannon" mounted to the beach? If you really want to make it something to write home about get the guy who was dropping hats on heads the other day to make a robot that drops life jackets on the heads of people flailing about in the water.

MobileVet• 2 years ago

Take a page from every sports stadium in the country... instead of launching T-shirts, launch a foam vest of some sort. Clearly you have an issue with hitting someone in the head with something hard, but probably the bigger issue is launching something that isn't very dense through the air.

Quad copter that flies out seems ideal.

WheatMillington3• 2 years ago

This is a semantic argument, but defining "safety" as mitigation and prevention of harm is valid.

akira25013• 2 years ago

Of course it is, which is why I said "not a useful _mindset_." I'm not arguing the semantics, just suggesting that allowing yourself to use them may alter your behavior in negative ways.

beart• 2 years ago

This feels a bit like blaming the victim. There are any number of things that can go wrong which may or may not be under your control. Specifically, the Great Lakes are more like seas than lakes. They have rip currents that can unexpectedly get you into trouble.

akira25013• 2 years ago

The robot brings you a flotation device. You should have one of those already. You should be wearing it if you're on the water for exactly the reason you've stated. Almost no one actually does this.

I've lived and fished on the lake for years. It's great for recreation. Way too many people do so entirely unprepared and often drastically underestimate the impacts of alcohol out on a boat in the hot sun.

WheatMillington3• 2 years ago

We wouldn't need seat belts if we simply didn't crash.

sailingparrot• 2 years ago

There are many reasons why a life jacket cannon is a terrible idea. How do you get perfect accuracy ? People that are drowning can’t swim anymore in many cases, they barely have energy to stay on the surface. So you can’t be off by 10 meters.

They also won’t have the energy to put the life jacket while already in the water. And while life jackets properly equipped around your torso make you float correctly, barely resting your arms on a life jacket is not terribly buoyant.

You need to account for wind, not just to aim, but also because the life jacket will drift away. And as it happens strong winds are responsible for rip currents and waves which is very often what causes drownings in the first place, so wind is the default environment, not an edge case.

Waves and surface currents have a strong chance of carrying away the jacket before the drowning person can get to it.

A system that can be course corrected to account for all of those parameters seem the best, its rigid, so will provide buoyancy even when just holding on the device, it’s also big enough to support more than one person, many drowning events involve more than one person (often someone that was initially trying to help end up getting themselves in trouble).

aftbit2• 2 years ago

How about a flying drone that drops an inflatable from a few meters above the struggling swimmer?

exe34• 2 years ago

knowing my luck, they would hit their aim perfectly, and I'd be knocked out.

itishappy3• 2 years ago

T-shirts and hats don't fly too straight. Robot paddleboards can steer.

marcellus23• 2 years ago

This isn't really a robot, more of just a remote-controlled boat. Still cool and a great idea for helping people who are drowning, of course. But seems misleading to call it a "robot", which (to me at least) implies some level of autonomy and more tech than you'd find in toy RC cars from 30 years ago.

MengerSponge4• 2 years ago

Industrial "robots" often (generally?) have very little autonomy. It's helpful to not be constrained to the human form.

What is a robot? An automated laborer.

nine_k• 2 years ago

Industrial robots are autonomous: they do not require an operator.

An RC car requires one.

lawlessone• 2 years ago

i thought was just a backpack until it took off

chankstein38• 2 years ago

The price tag also seems like the people want it to be marketed as a robot. You could strap a motor and RC controller to a floatation device and waterproof it for less than a couple hundred dollars. Why do things that are meant for safety always have to be insanely priced?

zardo• 2 years ago

Why do things that are meant for safety always have to be insanely priced?

When your product fails you may be liable for an injury or death.

NegativeLatency• 2 years ago

You could also put the operator on a jetski directly

tnel77• 2 years ago

While greed is surely some of the answer, I’d imagine liability also plays a part. If your device fails to save someone, you could be a target for litigation.

RobotToaster• 2 years ago

Yeah, if you look at the photos it's just just an RC boat with some stuff strapped to the top.

brink2• 2 years ago

Speaking of beach safety, this reminds me that I've been meaning to buy one of these. https://kingiistore.com/

I totally understand that not everyone wants to wear a life jacket all the time, me included.

upheaval7276• 2 years ago

Caution to anyone who clicks this link: mute your speakers first, or else you'll have to deal with blaring obnoxious music via an auto-play video that isn't visible without scrolling.

brink2• 2 years ago

What browser are you on that allows autoplaying video?

cypherpunks01• 2 years ago

I love this. An incredibly simple design for instant buoyancy. I'd think the device could be more affordable if there was additional competition. At $80 price-point it should include a small light (and/or sound) strobe that triggers for locating people in the dark. Gas cylinder refills are incredibly cheap and available everywhere. Makes a lot of sense to keep these around for open-water group swimming adventures, with swimmers of mixed strength.

hereme888• 2 years ago

Good. Finally. So much more efficient than a human on a paddleboard.

I wonder if it a drone could complement the technology by quickly dropping a flotation device while this robot or a recuer arrive to escort them.

CodeWriter23• 2 years ago

Lifeguards on some beaches in CA use rapid-deploy personal water craft like a Seadoo.

xnx• 2 years ago

Reach. Throw. Row^H^H^H Robot. Go.

MengerSponge4• 2 years ago

Throw Row Arigato Mr Roboto

for saving me again...

ben77992• 2 years ago

If it's $12k and requires an operator this seems more of a band-aid than anything. Where are the operators going to come from? And for a lot of places the operator + device probably pays for 3 lifeguards or swim instructors.

Nothing is going to get better until we start trying to get out of the hole and improve the average person's ability to swim and make decisions in open water. I used to be a lifeguard and swim instructor and it has mostly felt like things have gotten worse and worse over the last 20 years. Fewer and fewer places to swim, more and more places just made everything a wading pool or a splash park to reduce liability, and after a generation of this there is an undersupply of people who can teach others to swim. Now some municipalities in my area are trying to ban swimming in open water. They closed all the pools to save money, it gets hotter and hotter and more people who can't swim go in the oceans/rivers/ponds/lakes to try and cool off. A lot of the people who never learned to swim make extremely poor decisions when they go into open water or use a small boat. The answer is not to fine them for going in the water.

It's pretty frustrating to think about all this after watching the Olympic trials this past weekend.

sandworm101• 2 years ago

> A lot of the people who never learned to swim make extremely poor decisions when they go into open water or use a small boat.

And a great many of those poor decisions are somewhat based on drugs/alcohol. The kid drowning because in a rip off a popular beach is rare. The grown man drowning stuck under his own dock, even in his own pool, on a friday night is not. We shouldn't deprive kids of water access because grownups make poor decisions while high.

lotsofpulp• 2 years ago

Just another example of the US’s excessive liability culture that is gumming up the gears of society.

rich_sasha2• 2 years ago

I once went on an organized swim with wild marine mammals. What struck me was how many people on that trip could not swim and only relied on buoyancy aids and snorkels - I mean, guys, clue is in the activity title!

To be clear, this wasn't some swimming with captive dolphins, we were a few hrs out of port, in the middle of nowhere, in deep water.

thaumasiotes5• 2 years ago

What struck me was how many people on that trip could not swim and only relied on buoyancy aids and snorkels

I get the relationship between buoyancy aids and being unable to swim.

But snorkels? If you can't swim, a snorkel doesn't do anything to help you. What a snorkel helps with is making it more convenient to see things that are underwater.

whalesalad3• 2 years ago

I think we just need to be ok with the fact that people will die. Trying to attain a zero incident or zero death policy is completly unrealistic.

throwup238• 2 years ago

Some of you may drown, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make!

WalterBright6• 2 years ago

Seattle has a zero traffic deaths by 2030 initiative:

https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs...

Of course, the only way to achieve this is by having zero cars.

Airplanes are designed with a maximum fatality rate in mind, because mandating zero means mandating either infinite cost or zero airplanes.

burningChrome• 2 years ago

> Nothing is going to get better until we start trying to get out of the hole and improve the average person's ability to swim and make decisions in open water.

Couldn't agree more.

I remember growing up and my parents required myself and my brothers to take swim lessons all the way through junior lifesaving course which was the last course the city offered and you had to pass all the lower classes in order to get into the lifeguard class. These classes were always taught over the Summer and every class had 2-30 kids in it. The lifeguard class was slightly less around 10-15 kids, but still a large class.

I remember wanting to teach my daughter how to swim. The local pool didn't have lessons and neither did the YMCA, so we had to do one of these "mall-type" lessons where some company had a pool in some strip mall and you had one instructor and like 3 kids in the class. In an hour, then had maybe seven or eight reps of learning different techniques. I was just stunned it had changed so drastically. I remember being in the pool for almost two hours every day, every morning for my Summers, getting ten to fifteen minutes on each technique day after day. I remember riding on some rickety old school bus at 7am with a bunch of other kids I didn't know.

I don't know if its because there is no value for cities or the Y to take swimming lessons on any more, or the money and liability is too much. Either way, kids are not prepared to deal with being out in the open water, either in a pool or out in more dangerous areas like the ocean.

seanmcdirmid3• 2 years ago

Goldfish has been doing this a lot in the Seattle area, but we only get 30 minutes and it is often 4 kids. Our YMCAs offer classes as well, but it is still 30 minutes with a few more kids, so not much different.

The pandemic really pulled a number on delaying swim lessons, so there is a huge backlog along with a lot of kids who aren't catching up yet. My 7 year old is afraid to do water slides still, and he has been in class for about 9 months now. I know we got to that level more quickly when I was a kid.

vel0city• 2 years ago

Using the term "robot", which gives the impression of some kind of automation here, is the disconnect here I think. In the end the operator is probably just using a remote from the beach side.

Looking at the actual demonstration of it, it makes some sense to me. Maybe not not at $12k plus some kind of support contract with it, but it makes some sense.

A couple of things to think about:

One big part about trying to save someone in the water, especially water where you can't stand in, is "throw, don't go". That person out there will likely pull you under and drown you, even if they don't mean to. This makes it so the thing you "throw" has a hell of a lot more range.

That thing ripped through the water pretty quick to get to the person drowning. A lifeguard wouldn't be that fast to get out there. Having them quickly ready to toss in and have a lifeguard in a tower with good visibility get out there to a swimmer that just needs a stable float and help coming back in. Getting to a person struggling in the water before they go under is very important especially in water that isn't very clear.

With how fast it was going, I bet it would also do well to help pull someone in that's struggling to fight a current, something a lifeguard would also have a hard time (sometimes nearly impossible) doing.

seanmcdirmid3• 2 years ago

Perhaps some kind of precision artillery/guided rocket would work as well. If you just need to get floatation device to swimmer, going through the air might work well (if the wind isn't strong, of course).

pomian• 2 years ago

Dartmouth college (USA), had a requirement that you must pass a swimming test to receive your degree. ( Obviously - if you didn't know how, there were free lessons.) They have recently dropped that requirement! ( After more than 200 years.) Why? At least with the old rules, you always knew that if a person was a Dartmouth grad, you could push them in the water. Or, at least, not worry about boating with them.

Keyframe• 2 years ago

In (ex) Yugoslavia as kids in kindergarten I attended, we were required to take swimming and skiing lessons and pass test. Later in the primary school same thing with orienteering. It was all masked as fun activities, and truth be told they were, but now I see the bigger picture. I'm still putting my kids through those as well; It's both fun and damn useful.

luma• 2 years ago

These days, you can't really push anyone into the water unless you're ready to pick up the bill for whatever non-waterproof electronics they current have on their person.

It's hard to explain to young people exactly how or why it was, once upon a time, perfectly acceptable to toss people into the nearest body of water with no explanation needed or offered. I think we lost something along the way :D

nkurz• 2 years ago

Williams College (US school similar to Dartmouth in culture but smaller) had the same requirement for over 100 years. It was removed in 2022 largely out of concern that it had "disparate impact" on non-white students. Now those students are free to graduate without the embarrassment of being taught how to prevent themselves from drowning: https://williamsrecord.com/461123/news/faculty-votes-to-scra....

seanmcdirmid3• 2 years ago

Most Chinese universities still have this requirement, but my wife was able to pass the test without knowing how to swim (the instructor didn't really pay attention during the test). We fixed that before we went snorkeling on our honeymoon to Bali.

robomartin• 2 years ago

things have gotten worse and worse over the last 20 years

My kids and I are trained and experienced in open water and lake swimming. Still, every time we go out, we use one of these:

https://www.google.com/search?q=swim+buoy

I've had the experience of being in a large lake with very high winds. It felt like being in an angry ocean. Having a swim buoy provided for a few opportunities to stop, chill, catch my breath and plan my route.

You have to respect, not fear, water. Fear means you are not rational and likely have no ability to control outcomes or make sensible decisions. What you need if your SCUBA gear malfunctions 75 feet down is to be rational. Anything else can kill you.

When I taught my kids (and a few other people) how to swim, the first skill they had to learn was to be able to float/bob in the middle of the deep end of the pool for one hour. Can't touch the bottom. The only way you are going to do that is to first learn to relax and, to some extent, be one with the water. Once someone realizes they can just stop and bob in place without moving much, their relationship with water changes dramatically.

From there to swimming just means slowly adding speed and direction. Style doesn't matter. Once they can stay in the middle of the pool until they are bored silly, learning how to move through water efficiently is the next logical step. The entire experience, if taught well, is very organic. More importantly, it teaches people that they can survive in water and that they have the ability to pause and use their brains.

Fewer and fewer places to swim, more and more places just made everything a wading pool or a splash park to reduce liability

True enough. We live near a lake. I am good friends with the lifeguards from years of my kids being in the Junior Lifeguard program. They also know me from kayaking in the lake during Santa Ana winds (full dry suit and PFD).

A few years ago I was walking around the lake during a nice afternoon. I was walking in water up to my ankles. It felt good.

One of the lifeguards I knew well, came up to me on his boat to let me know that was illegal. He could technically fine me and even have me arrested if I refused to abide by the rules. Like I said, he knew me, so it was more of a conversation than a threat to action. He didn't like the rule any more than I did. However, they (the lifeguards) always told me that people do stupid shit at the lake and several have drowned over the years. And nobody wants to see that happen. So, nobody can even touch the water except where the beach is open and you have half a dozen lifeguards on duty.

Brilliant.

prosaic-hacker• 2 years ago

Your desire that everyone learns to swim is laudable but as with all useful skills it takes work. Our completely distracted society is loosing skills like map reading, making change, driving manual, tying knots(still learning) ... (Sounds like a reason for Scouting and 4H) I will even posit shoelace tying given all the Velcro shoes.

12K is a lot for ROV (other comments suggest the could be cheaper ones) but the good news is the operator has had 10,000 hours practice on a Xbox. The Engineer/PM/Accountant in me hopes the ROV is reusable and will be used over many years spreading the cost out over time saving many people.

Hopefully the saved will come to Jesus (pronounced "heysous"), I mean the local teen working at the swimming pool who has a knack for teaching adults to swim.

rldjbpin• 2 years ago

depending on the public funding present, it can be seen as a safer alternative. to replace having people responsible to risk their lives to save those who fall by accident or those risking their lives without taking precautions.

this to me seems like how one should make it mandatory for everyone to learn how to drive a car if you want to sit in one, or drive a boat for being on one in the lake in the first place. swimming is cool but achieving this is much more unrealistic than attempting with this otherwise half-measure.

chasd00• 2 years ago

seems like it wouldn't be that hard to have a lifeguard spot someone with a laser and then a drone drop a life jacket on that spot. They could just use the laser until the drone has the coordinates of the reflection and then start swimming while the drone flys ahead and drops a life jacket at least somewhat close.

if that doesn't pan out then pivot and sell the tech to the military replacing life jacket with a grenade of some sort.

rqtwteye• 2 years ago

"Robot" is a little misleading for basically a remote controlled boat. Definitely very useful.

ec109685• 2 years ago

It seems like having real drones monitor the water and these robotic boats could make a difference over time.

An AI lifeguard seems like a tractable problem, making it possible for human guards to cover a lot more area.

nanis• 2 years ago

Number one criterion for finding a good beach to swim: A prominent sign saying "Swim at your own risk: No lifeguard on duty."

topspin• 2 years ago

Indeed. The Lake Huron beach I frequent has no life guard. Also, no sign.

Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

Related Stories