Tag: RESCUE

With rescue workers continuing to search for survivors among the rubble from last week's devastating earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, a group of engineers from the U.K. have constructed a robot that could make their jobs a little easier -- thanks to Microsoft's Xbox Kinect. The Kinect's motion-detection sensors can instantly model the robot's surroundings and scan them for survivors, ...

Most Facebook games may not do a whole lot for the body, mind and soul, but one online game may have just saved the life of a disabled man named Robert Chambers. On Tuesday, Chambers was at home in Spokane playing a Facebook game called 'Evony,' when his toaster caught on fire. Smoke began filling his living room, and Chambers began to panic. Because he suffers from muscular dystrophy, the ...

Share Four years ago, Peter Trayhurn and Geoff Tosio found themselves floating adrift five miles off the coast of Australia, and facing the terrifying possibility that they might never be found. They had been exploring underwater caves when the anchor line on their boat snapped, and the vessel drifted away. Miraculously, Trayhurn and Tosio were spotted by a ship, plucked from the water, and ...

We all feel a certain degree of attachment to our phones, but most people probably wouldn't be willing to stick their arms down a public toilet to retrieve their submerged cells. This anonymous guy from China, however, is apparently not "most people." After dropping his phone in a toilet (not as rare an event as you'd think) in China's Jiangsu province, the man decided to go fishing for it with ...

Share Most people probably wouldn't drive their cars off a cliff just because their GPS system told them to do it. Driving off-road and up a mountain, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. That's exactly what 37-year-old Robert Ziegler recently did, when his van's GPS system directed him up some ruggedly mountainous terrain in Bergün, Switzerland. Although Ziegler had his ...

As part of its ongoing relief efforts in flood-devastated Pakistan, the U.S. military has begun using social media to coordinate the disparate aid organizations in the region. But, even as many international and Pakistani developers and relief workers have latched onto social networking tools, they have yet to engage with the U.S. military online. As Wired reports, mobile apps and ...

Share In its heyday, 'Baywatch' not only provided endless hours of shoreline safety education, but also fostered an entire generation of males who fantasized about being rescued by a panting, red-one-piece clad Yasmine Bleeth. Sadly, though, future generations of hormone-charged beachgoers in distress might one day fantasize about being saved not by Yasmine, Pamela, or the Hoff, but by someone ...

Laura Boffi, a design student in Copenhagen, and her team have created a special jacket that allows rescue dogs to relay messages from survivors while tagging their location. According to DVICE and the video after the jump, the jacket plays music while the dog searches for a victim in the wake of an earthquake or other disaster. An accelerometer detects when the dog sits, and then, the victim can ...

Sometimes, albeit rarely, what initially seems like wasting time on the Web can turn out to be anything but that. Case in point, a German woman who had only wanted to enjoy a beautiful view via a webcam recently became a long-distance lifesaver. According to the Associated Press, an unidentified woman was recently watching a live webcam broadcast of the sun setting over the North Sea when she ...

A GPS device can be a wonderful tool when traveling, and even help save lives. Just as easy, it can foul up a trip and make you want to bash it with a rock. For a Reno, Nevada couple, their GPS pulled double-duty and did both. While traveling through Eastern Oregon last week, John Rhoads and Starry Bush-Rhoads became lost after a cell phone equipped with a GPS told them to turn off the highway ...

How's this for a new BlackBerry commercial? A skier glides down a powdery, white slope in Switzerland. Suddenly, he falls into a crevice. Just before he slips farther, his BlackBerry (stored in his chest pocket) catches the ice and saves him from falling to his death. It might not be a practical way to sell a product, but the phone company won't have to search for a spokesman. According to a ...

If you think GPS-equipped devices are strictly for bad drivers or novice hikers, you may want to reconsider. Edmonton, Alberta's Josh Brown, 21, was rescued last week, and is now recovering, from a climbing accident that saw him fall close to thirty feet onto hard ground, according to CTV Calgary. Brown, who suffered fractured ribs and vertebrae, was climbing in Banff National Park when he ...

The micro-blogging service Twitter played a role in attempts to rescue two snowboarders lost in Switzerland this week, reports Fox News. British Internet entrepreneurs Rob Williams and Jason Tavaria were snowboarding in the Verbier ski resort Monday when bad weather separated them from their party. Over the next 24 hours, concerned friends and colleagues took to Twitter, spreading news of ...

We've already learned that an iPod can be used to stop bullets (we don't suggest building body armor out of them, though), but now you can add emergency beacon to the list of life-saving alternate uses for the Apple media player. A pair of French tourists on a ski trip in Switzerland found themselves lost in the woods late Friday. They called rescue officials who began a search, but the pair's ...

While we suggest getting real first aid and CPR training, a story out of Nebraska caught our eye. An avid player whose favorite game, 'America's Army,' has a whole first aid and triage-learning sequence, actually put his in-game skills to use at the scene of a real-life car accident late last year. Coming upon a flipped over SUV, one Paxton Galvanek correctly assessed the injured driver, began ...