Inventor Creates Flotation Device Bazooka 144
Australian inventor Sam Adeloju has won the £20,000 ($32,000) James Dyson Award for inventing the coolest piece of life-saving equipment ever. The Longreach is a modified bazooka which can fire an expanding flotation device up to 150m to a person in distress. From the article: "Mr Adeloju told NEWS.com.au that the Longreach was inspired by a grenade-launch training session with the Army Reserves. Weighing just 3.5kg, it shoots the rescue device 150m in a manner similar to the way the army uses a grenade launcher to deliver flares and aerial observation devices. Hitting the water activates an expanding foam unit in the Longreach rescue unit, which also incorporates LED illumination and a vortex air whistle."
Projectile? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Hitting the water activates an expanding foam unit..."
What about hitting a drowning human?
Re:Projectile? (Score:5, Funny)
you'll be delighted to know that the impacted human will not have drowning as their cause of death
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"Hitting the water activates an expanding foam unit..."
What about hitting a drowning human?
The unit will still expand upon impact.
Why? Is that a concern?
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Re:Projectile? (Score:5, Funny)
What about hitting a drowning human?
Not as easy as hitting the water, but worth more points.
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Combo multiplier if you can take out a seagull with the same shot.
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Oh, it's not so hard. You just don't lead them as much.
- Gunner, Full Metal Jacket
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A "BONK!" graphic appears above their head, at which point you may opt to say "DOOOWN TOWN!" in your best Brooklyn accent.
(Sorry, been playing a lot of TF2 lately...)
Re:Projectile? (Score:5, Funny)
Sailor1:"Damn, I missed."
Sailor2:"Shoot him again."
Sailor1:"This isn't a video game, I'm trying to save the guy."
Sailor2:"You'd better hurry, he's gonna camp behind the first one."
Sailor1: *foomp*
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Well clearly it wouldn't expand then. Can't you read?
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What about adding heat seeking tracking to the grenade, and have it splash down x meters from the heat signature closest to it's original target range?
Then you a) don't inadvertently kill the person you want to save, and b) even a drunk idiot should have a chance to get the flotation device land within a "useful" range of the victim.
Er.. (Score:4, Insightful)
So uh, what happens when your aim is a little too good, and you beam someone in the water with this 3.5kg thing? It's hard to swim when you're unconscious..
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"Probably takes some training to be good at shooting it accurately."
It's a fucking T-shirt cannon, how hard can it be?
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no, you're not using enough 3D models and technobabble. He's probably got a patent pending on this and will sue all mascots when he finds out!
But yeah, it's a FANCY Tee Shirt cannon, but it shoots 150 meters.... You'd have a hard time getting something as light as a flotation device shot that far without compressing it somehow.
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A refinement to the device would be a range finder, with programmable deployment pod. Instead you fire it over their head, so when the floatation projectile reaches the specified distance, it suddenly expands and drops instead of beaning the drowning person in the head. This would probably push the price up a bit, but makes it particularly cool.
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considering it's not designed for accuracy I doubt anyone will hit anyone at 150 meters (1.5 football fields).
It takes top atheletes nearly 30 seconds to swim 50 meters, and average swimmers at least double that [blurtit.com], meaning a minute and a half to 3 minutes for someone to reach you 150 meters away. It's very easy to be very dead after 3 minutes in the water making this invention is genius, wonder wh
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Up to 150m you say? (Score:3, Insightful)
So someone 60m from the boat will only have to swim another 90m away from the boat to get their floatie, when the jackass firing the thing misreads the directions.
And then there's the chance someone will just toss the whole unit into the drink, thinking it's the flotation device.
Here's my invention: in situations where people are likely to go overboard, require them to wear flotation vests.
Re:Up to 150m you say? (Score:4, Informative)
;-)
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You've already gotten to yell "Man Overboard!" what more do you need?
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Are you Insane??
Require them to wear life saving gear??!?!
Actually, current safety gear for a motorcycle, if worn by the driver can walk away with only minor bruises from a 100mph crash. Unfortunately most Motorcycle riders are too stupid to buy and use said gear.
I get a kick out of the complete morons riding their crotch rocket in flip flops, shorts and a t-shirt... They advertise to the world "I AM A COMPLETE IDIOT" even a 1 Gram insect at highway speeds will knock the wind out of you and leave a brui
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Actually, current safety gear for a motorcycle, if worn by the driver can walk away with only minor bruises from a 100mph crash. Unfortunately most Motorcycle riders are too stupid to buy and use said gear.
This "safety gear" you refer to is called a "car".
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His post was in reply to someone claiming that motorcycle safety gear can allow drivers to "walk away with only minor bruises from a 100mph crash".
Which is harder to achieve than with a "car" scenario.
From what I see the main reason why motorcycle riders in official races walk away after crashes and the ones on the street don't is because on a certified race circuit when "stuff happens" riders usually get t
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at 100 mph the car becomes your killer. it rolls and instead of being a nice little roller skate it's a lumpy mass of razor blades.
you're right about bike accidents at 100 mph at the track; and anything at the track that could be unyielding at those speeds is buried in straw or tires or foam
if full body armor was actuarily significant street accidents, you'd see motorcycle cops wearing it
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You do see cops wearing it. All over europe and in California Cops on bikes wear armor.
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A) Launch a second one if you miss.
B) This is for people trained to use.
C) In some some seas, a simple life jacket isn't enough.
D) What cruise line is going to make all their passengers wear a life jacket all the time?
E) What about beach goers?
F) Giving someone in a bad water situation something to hold onto with their hands makes it easier for a rescue person to control the person.
It is a good idea, you just seem to gt self fulfillment from making bullshit reason why something is bad. You are being a sad h
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Yeah, and everyone on the beach wearing one.
You obviously never had to deal with a rip current. It is not funny. You just see the shore going away at a speed that can make even an experienced swimmer panic on the spot and try to fight the current instead of getting out of it.
Scrubs, anyone? (Score:4, Funny)
A floatation device bazooka sounds like something that The Janitor from Scrubs would create
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I don't think it could coexist very well with the KnifeWrench.
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You need to also get the SheathHammer.
200 year old technology (Score:5, Interesting)
That tech is about 200 years old. No kidding. 1st documented rescue rocket rescue 18 February 1808.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~dodd/gail/publications/trengrouse/Essay.html [iinet.net.au]
that's a leader line (Score:2)
The device described just runs out a leader line and you then come out in a boat on that line hand over hand.
This is a device that lets you shoot a life preserver out and the person saves himself.
In addition, this is designed to be shot to a person, not to the deck of a ship.
So they're in the same family I guess, but this is not the same. I doubt this one is really the first of its kind either, but the most important thing is that it work well and become available. Let's hope for the best.
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Modernization is all about making things smaller and more expensive.
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Yet it is still advertised as a half-gallon as often as not. What say we file a class action?
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THIS is why I love slashdot. It "just happened" that some user knew there was already somebody using freaking rockets for maritime rescue. AND has a link well prepared for people who aren't ready to dig through 200 years old diaries they can't access anyway, with nice pictures to boot.
Thank you!
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Well, I just happen to have this nugget of knowledge rattling around in my brain: Lyle Guns [wikipedia.org] were used long ago to shoot lines to ships in distress along the US coasts by the US Lifesaving Service [youtube.com].
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Is that website 200 years old as well?
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This one appears to work very well. Perfection rather than innovation I guess.
Appropriately, it has won the James Dyson Award. Dyson didn't invent the vacuum cleaner, just made better ones.
And this exact idea is two years old: (Score:2)
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/prototype-this-flying-lifeguard.html [discovery.com]
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This was on Prototype This a LONG time ago. It's in the Flying Life Guard episode, and they shoot an inflating life preserver out of a canon. Actually, theirs is even better because the stranded person has a little box that transmits their location to the gun and it puts the life jacket within 10 feet of them. Good show, by the way, and Season One is available on netflix streaming..
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If you don't have comic sans on your computer- you'll never know
alternatively- you can put a substitution preference into your browser
aiming method?? (Score:2)
There doesn't seem to be much in the way of aiming assistance from the graphic. If there's enough force to shoot the payload 150M then I'd prefer it land a few meters near to me but not on my head if I were in need of its help. Aiming as shown could put the thing 100M away.
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Ah, yes, well... I guess you'll just have to wait until next year when the Human Homing Emergency Life-Preserver Munition Emitter (HHELP-ME) is available. Until then, I guess you can sink 'em or save 'em (or both) with the same weapon, er, um, life saving bazooka...
I wonder when someone will build a mod to put one of these in a first person shooter? BFG? Naw, give me the LPB!
Boom. Headshot. (Score:3, Funny)
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So does that mean Dick Cheney can finally shoot people in the face and more easily get away with it claiming that "I was just trying to save the guy"?
Or that he'll keep using shotguns and claim that he thought it was the liferaft shooter he was using.
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Dick Cheney doesn't need to make excuses, nor does Dick Cheney make mistakes. If Dick Cheney shot you in the face, you deserved it, and he'll do it again, and he wont' say sorry!
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Oh easy to make (Score:1)
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Sweet! I'm going to modify it to shoot grenades!
I got to fire a real grenade launcher in the '80s, and it IS as good as it sounds! Hit the side of a rusted out tank with a non-explosive round. Good times!
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"...drowned body of John Doe found today wearing a tshirt that reads 'I was expecting a flotation device but all I got was this stupid tshirt.'"
If you have quad damage (Score:3, Funny)
Do you save four times as many people?
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Of course, but you do have to be mindful of splash damage.
I see what you did there.
Beach balls at sporting events? (Score:2)
Re:Beach balls at sporting events? (Score:4, Funny)
Just ask Maude Flanders how cool that is.
It needs... (Score:2)
...a laser target designator.
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...a laser target designator.
So we can blind the person before hitting them in the head with a raft. They will never see it coming!
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Generally laser target designators use infrared wavelengths. Apparantly blinding someone is against the geneva convention, plus you don't want to (in war) give away your position in visible light.
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Infrared lasers can blind you, too, and since you can't see the infrared you don't have the normal blink reflex to protect you.
Apparently this is a problem with some (many) of the newer green laser pointers that operate by doubling an IR laser to get to green.
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I thought for a given power IR lasers were more dangerous than visible because of the lack of a blink reflex.
Not to be confused with... (Score:1)
Nice, but ... (Score:2)
Also, how the hell do you aim this thing? If it can go 150m hod do you aim at that little speck of a person 75m away? And compensating for wind/current drift.
Over all a good idea and Kudos to the creator, it does still need a little work. Maybe Laser guided with a ballistic flight path and a bit of "no_hit_person" code in the guidance module so it lands near, but not on the
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Maybe Laser guided with a ballistic flight path and a bit of "no_hit_person" code in the guidance module so it lands near, but not on the designated target.
this thing (probably) is purely balistic, so once it is fired, there is no way to compensate for sudden wind-gusts or anything, putting actual guidance electronics on it and some method of course correction probably makes this way to advanced/complex
if they can package this into the standard 40mm grenade launcher cartridge, you could just take one of those revolver things and pump out six of those life-rafts in quick succesion, or better yet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HK_GMG [wikipedia.org]
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As to guidance, its not new tech and would not be hard, or prohibitively expensive, to add to these projectiles. Raytheon make a laser guidance kit you can bolt onto a standard "dumb" bomb, the "brains" in those LGB kits are smaller than a
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i realize the electronics are pretty small for a laser guidance kit, but the hardware to actually alter its course i think would be pretty serious, especially if you want to change course/compensate for a large gust within 150 meters.
and i think the 40mm form factor would be awesome, you could make standard sized munitions and every soldiers could carry one rescue-round when in theaters where water is a-plenty
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Now that I think about it, if the launcher does all the initial wind compensation putting extra hardware in the projectile becomes less important, even if a big gust did knock it way off course it would be easy to just launch another, or a barrage as you suggested earli
Existing patents on the same (Score:2)
Inflatable and recoverable lifesaving projectile apparatus [ip.com]
The above don't use foam though.
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What people don't get about patents, it's general not an idea. It's a specific way to do something.
No thanks. (Score:2)
150m isn't that far (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming this is designed for use on large ships where MOB is a distinct problem (consider how difficult it is to stop and turn around an aircraft carrier or container ship), at 20 knots, you'd have to notice the man overboard and fire the device within 15 seconds. At a carrier's max speed of 35 knots, you have less than 9 seconds. While it's certainly an improvement over hand thrown projectiles, it doesn't have enough distance to handle likely scenarios.
echo -e '150 m / 20 knots\ns'|units -t1 if you want to play with the conversion yourself.
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Wouldn't this be more for beaches? 150m is about as far out as most people would go on a beach AFAIK.
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Wouldn't this be more for beaches? 150m is about as far out as most people would go on a beach AFAIK.
In my experience, once people get into trouble on a beach, they tend to be unable to swim or be in waves, which makes lifesaving devices pretty much useless. You have to actually go out and get them by swimming or using a boat.
Re:150m isn't that far (Score:4, Insightful)
I've a reasonable fraction of my life along the northwestern coast of Denmark, which has some very tricky beaches. The most dangerous places can be those without waves, especially if it's windy. An area with no waves in strong winds is a sign of very strong undertows. The locals learn to read the waves, but tourist think "what a lovely calm piece of water, I'll swim there". They then get dragged out to sea, and even the strongest swimmers can't fight the currents. Many drown not from being overwhelmed by waves but from exhaustion fighting the currents. A flotation device would be perfect in those cases. They'll be able to keep themselves afloat and much easier to spot and retrieve by boat or helicopter, because there is no way anyone sane would be swimming out after them.
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A flotation device would be perfect in those cases.
If the currents were faster than swimmers could swim, then I'd expect you to quickly outdistance 150m. Though even in those cases, if you got close enough into the same current, it'd probably be close enough to be useful.
Of course, people will still find all kinds of innovative ways to drown themselves...
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I've also vacationed in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. They have tons of life preservers strewn about in cases that sound an alarm when you open it. Those things have MAYBE a 20 foot range if you get a good throw. If someone is in trouble from the coastline you'd better hope that an Olympic discus champion sees you in the water...
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(In the case of an aircraft carrier, it's likely that you'd have aircraft on board, so you could potentially launch one or more to assist in location or recovery.)
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Most ships wouldn't turn.
I was sonar operator on a frigate when in the navy. We sonar guys had a secondary role as crew of the dinghy. In a MOB situation we would get into survival suits and launch immediately, while the ship turned and cut engines after doing 180 degrees, ending up in roughly the same area as the man went overboard. Our target time was four minutes from MOB alarm until the man was safely aboard the dinghy. In realistic unannounced exercises we usually beat that time by a few seconds.
We didn't have a chopper, but w
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In a MOB situation we would get into survival suits and launch immediately, while the ship turned and cut engines after doing 180 degrees, ending up in roughly the same area as the man went overboard.
Were you guys using davits or a chute? 4 minutes is very impressive with davits with any signficant freeboard.
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Were you guys using davits or a chute?
Hydraulic davits, but they had some kind of clutch and brakes for speedy descent. Our freeboard was about 11 meters, still the descent was *very* quick with a good winch operator, and we launched at speed if necessary. It helped that our "dinghy" was one of these jet-propulsed devil-may-care babies [google.com]. I called it a dinghy for lack of a better word, its speed and maneuverability is unbelievable even in rough seas (weight is 3000 Kg, not pounds as in the google translation. Why the heck do they translate *only*
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You hear MOB, you get out a floatie gun or two and shoot it off in the person's general direction.
We *always* had three lookouts on duty, including an aft lookout. Of course their instructions was to trow a lifebuoy with an automatic homing light if someone went for a swim. You're right though, they could probably get closer with something like this, especially when we're steaming at 27 knots :)
If you can get it close enough to the victim so they can swim to it and get out of the cold water
Irrelevant to your point and a minor nitpick, but you don't get clear of the cold water... you stay afloat without exhausting yourself. Without a flotation device in rough seas and freezing water you'll not die o
Top 5 weapon-inspired life-saving devices (Score:2)
4. Bazooka-fired MREs
3. Bazooka-fired fire extinguisher
2. Bazooka-fired first aid kit
1. Bazooka!
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If only I could get some sort of gum~
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The bazooka-fired first aid kit would be a fun addition to many games, anyway. Since you usually don't even need to do anything to pick up items in your path, a first aid kit to the face (fired by a bazooka) would actually heal you.
Awesome.
Other Fun Uses (Score:3, Funny)
Am I evil for thinking this would fun to shoot into the open windows of passing cars that play tasteless music too loudly?
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sure... but how do you fill the passing car with water first?
Filling a passing car with water, _that's_ what I would like to have a gun do.
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I'd look into your local fire department. ;-)
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Evil? No. Evil is using a real bazooka on those jackasses. I really do wish it were easier to obtain significant ordinance here in the US. Assault rifles really don't make the kind of impression that you often need with these jerkoffs.
This is clever (Score:2)