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Hi Tech, Wireless Help for Climbers 58

Posted by michael from the rather-have-more-pitons dept.
Mark Baard writes "Alpinists may soon be using wearable sensors and tricorder-like medical scanners to bail out their buried comrades. Computer scientists Bernt Schiele and Florian Michahelles, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, are designing A-Life, a portable device that transmits and receives avalanche victims' vital signs through snow, up to 80 meters away."
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Hi Tech, Wireless Help for Climbers More

Hi Tech, Wireless Help for Climbers

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  • Just think... (Score:3, Funny)

    by GabrielStrange ( 628884 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @06:27AM (#4956427) Homepage
    If Microsoft gets involved with these somehow, the Blue Screen of Death could really mean going blue and then dead... :P
  • I am an idiot. Go Computer Science! Yay retards!
    • That was a stupid comment, you ass. Oh wait, I am replying to myself. Damnit, slashdot readers, you should have told me that I was stupid way before I caught it myself. Don't mod this up, it is crap.

  • Personal Locators (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MegaFur ( 79453 ) <wyrd0@NOSPAM.komy.zzn.com> on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @06:49AM (#4956458) Journal
    Devices that give away your present position:
    Are they
    a) great because they let people find you when you're buried under gobs of snow, or
    b) evil 'cause The System can use it to track you and make sure you're not doing something "subversive"
    ?

    The answer, of course, is: c) both a and b.

    Does anyone have a *good* way to get all of (a) (generalized that is, not just snow) without any of (b)?
    (No, no, not a stupid law; I said a *good* way.)
    • b) evil 'cause The System can use it to track you and make sure you're not doing something "subversive"
      LOL! Man, now I have really read it all. If you'd bothered to read the article, you might have noted that the tools would enable locating and getting critical health information up to 80 metres away. For The System to use this for their subversive and privacy-invading gain, they'd have to be 80 metres or less away from their target.

      I got news for you...if The System is 80 metres-or-less away from you, they don't need no steenkin' fancy climber-tracking system to cap your ass. The technology to close-monitor targets has been around for decades.

      But, yeah, I hear ya, man. When you're dilly-dallying over the Hillary Step, you gotta be prepared for those loitering Sherpas to take advantage of your low O's and diminishing stamina. They don't call it The Death Zone for nothing, ya know.
      • from the tangential intersection point.

        I'd like to defend (but not really) my original, admittedly lame karma-whorish (note that it's at +4 right now) post by saying: I was just generalizing.

        Although, in truth, doubtless I was *over*generalizing--a common trait here on slashdot.

        Btw, I've used FreeDOS. At least I think I have.

        See there was this DOS program I really, really wanted to run and I was going to need to run it over and over. I didn't want to have to keep booting back and forth between Linux and DOS and I didn't (don't) have any extra computers handy right then (or now). So I went for the DOSEmu.

        The DOSEmu has almost no documentation right now, at least none that I was able to find. (At this point, you know that I'm the sort of person that has a tendency to overgeneralize so you might want to take that with a grain of salt.) The instructions had me download two thingies and one of them was FreeDOS. If I understand correctly, the DOSEmu provides the lower level DOS stuff while FreeDOS provides most of the actual commands.

        Oh yeah, the good part about the DOSEmu: even though it has almost no documentation, unless you're trying to do something really weird, you won't need any. Everything just pops up in the appropriate places.

        Except the COMMAND.COM sucks. I mean even compared to the standard DOS COMMAND.COM it sucks. Whose is that? Is that DOSEmu's or FreeDOS's? It looks like it's DOSEmu's. Is there any chance that FreeDOS could write their own? Have they already? Am I a total moron? (Probably, yes.)

        I'll stop bugging you now. :-)
    • Word Up, Dude!

      I hear ya!

      Last time I was climbing K2 [peakware.com] there were these freakin' Black Helicopters [google.com] following me! I'm positive they were tracking me via my avalanche beacon [rei.com]!

      No matter how high I climbed, they were right there behind me! So on the down climb I took a risk and tossed the beacon off a cliff. The dumbasses followed it as it fell down the 1000m cliff! I think they think I'm dead. So now I can have a fresh start. I've changed my name, changed my Slashdot nick and everything's cool.

      I wouldn't touch one of these ultra-tracking beacons with an avalache probe [rei.com], let alone actually wear one!
    • "Does anyone have a *good* way to get all of (a) (generalized that is, not just snow) without any of (b)?
      "

      Yes. Do what they have done, and make it completely optional to wear such a device, and allow the user to turn it on and off as they wish. Chances are, they'll only turn it on when they are at risk of being buried, and in the case of snow, that generally happens to be far from the mostly-urban-based prying eyes of big brother

  • This may increase danger (Score:4, Informative)

    by flopsy mopsalon ( 635863 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @06:59AM (#4956471)
    While any device that will help save lives is definitely welcome, the more bigger issue is whether these types of equipment won't actually increase the number of climbing deaths by encouraging inexperienced, overconfident, wealthy thrillseekers to try "bagging" a few "peaks".

    Many experienced climbers today complain about the presence of parties of rich people seeking the latest "extreme" sport, being driven or even helicoptered in to a suitable site near a mountain's peak. Cushy base camps featuring the latest in electronic entertainment gear, heated tents, and even portable jacuzzis are not uncommon even along the slopes of such forbidding mountains as Everest and K2.

    And now comes life sign monitors, so the hired help can quickly dig some careless wannabe mountaineer out of a snowbank. Complete with body-orientation signals so a stray shovel won't hit their heads. Will these truly help save lives, or only encourage the foolhardy to risk theirs?

    • IMO, those kind of devices are most likely to increase the number of idiots who will take more and more risks to go to areas where no responsible alpinist would go. We already have enough "thrill-seeking" snowboarders, skiers and climbers who are buried in avalanches every year.

      However, even the most experienced alpinist can get into a situation which (s)he didn't foresee, and be it because of another idiot chosing the same route and causing disaster.

      Maybe such device shouldn't be available for sale. Instead, they could be available for rent (or free even) at local bases, requiring to leave the groups' intended routes. Responsible alpinists and skiers would benefit. Irresponsible morons, sorry to say that, would remain candidates for the darwin award.
    • ... or it will enable the hired help to say "Screw it, he's dead" and change it from a rescue to a recovery!

      I read some article a few years ago that the then-fairly-new portable cell phones were enabling yuppies to hike up big mountain's like the White Mountains, then get stuck or exhausted and call 911 for a sky lift down and what a pain they had become for park rangers.

      Which reminds me, last October my friends and I hiked up Picacho Peak [mac.com] near Tucson. I'm 43, and while I walk a lot, the three mile hike (so far) was doing a number on my heart and fatigue so I stopped before hitting the top. I was not going to go beyond my limits. The others went on and yeah, I regret it now, but it gives me incentive to go back after I train some more, get some proper gear like gloves for the steel rope climbs and ropes to haul the 9 liters of water we took (which was all on *my* back and made balance going up rock faces very difficult). My mistake was that, since this was a state-park maintained trail, I figured it wouldn't be all that tough. As pics like in the link above show, there were a few almost vertical climbs up rock faces using steel ropes set away from the rock by about two-foot I hooks we had to go up. (I did make it up the biggest set at least! :)

      But there was no way I was going to go beyond my limits and then call 9-1-1 like a typical out-of-shape computer geek who doesn't know his limits...

      (But yeah, I am still getting teased for being a pussy. Male bonding rituals are the best! :)

  • Software making life and death decisions? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tgrotvedt ( 542393 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @07:09AM (#4956481) Journal
    The article says that the software may or may not decide who to save in what order.

    If I was a developer, I wouldn't touch a decision-making feature with a 20 foot pole. Even with Microsoft's (for example) legal team. Imagine the lawsuits! There would be people saying the computer made the wrong decision, and even worse, there could be bugs which make fatal mistakes.

    Somehow if a loved one is dead, I really wouldn't want to hear "Well, there's a patch for that now..."

    • The article says that the software may or may not decide who to save in what order.


      There's no way they can do that, ethically or morally. You may have someone with a weak heartbeat listed as taking precedence over someone with a strong heartbeat, but that doesn't tell you whether the person with the strong heartbeat has the same amount of oxygen left, or whether the snow above is about to collapse and fill up the pocket.

      If they really want to make devices to save people in the mountains, they needa cheap version of a device I saw in one of the James Bond movies, that blows up a big protective balloon around the person wearing it. Of course, the tanks would need to be filled with a compressed mix similar to environmental ratio, because whoever wears it is going to need to collapse it quickly for breathable air...
    • This is great! I want to hack mine so it Cycles from stable vital signs to critial and then back to stable. The rescuer will think I am badly injured but a real fighter so I will be one of the 1st they will try to dig out.

  • -500 Off Topic (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by sheepab ( 461960 )
    MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

  • Knowing a Victim's Vitals Good For Rescuers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by n8 ( 32455 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @08:11AM (#4956546)
    I have been a ski patroller at a small local area for 9 years now and I had the unfortunate privelidge of being on the mountain when a fellow ski patroller was killed in an avalanche during Avalache Control. What nobody knew at the time was that the patroller that was killed was buried in such a way that he had no air pocket and most likely died within the first 3 minutes of being buried. Yet, the rescue team put themselves into a position where they were attempting save someone in very hazardous avalanche conditions who was actually already dead. The rescue team actually set off more avalanches accidentally and partially buried members of the team.

    Rescue attempts like this are always extremely dangerous for the people involved. If they had some way of knowing whether the person was alive it would be very valuable information when trying to make the decision whether or not to risk other people's lives in order to save a buried person.

  • more info (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You can find more information about the project on Bernt Schiele's Group Homepage at
    http://www.vision.ethz.ch/projects/ [vision.ethz.ch]

    Merry Xmas to all of you /.'ers
  • A skier was left buried for several months without recieving assistance because he refused to sign the EULA of his wireless dealy.

    His last words were, "Damn you Clippy this isn't funny!"

  • Huh? (Score:1, Troll)

    by I Am The Owl ( 531076 )
    wearable sensors and tricorder-like medical scanners

    What in the world is a tricorder? Couldn't they have at least provided a link in the article for those of us not steeped in the terminology of computer science?

    • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by belloc ( 37430 )
      for those of us not steeped in the terminology of computer science

      Bwuh...hate to break it to you, but a tri-corder is a Star Trek thingy. It was the do-all handheld for Bones, Kirk, Spock and the rest. Has nothing to do with CS.

      Belloc

  • Durability? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Flagbrew ( 471794 )
    Through the voluminous amounts of information provided in the article, and more importantly the ETH (is that the manufacturer?) website I was able to glean... absoultely nothing that would convince me to switch to this system. I completly agree with Florian Michahelles, that "augmenting" our current beacons, which incidentally not a very high percentage of mountaineers are wearing anyway, with sensors is an excellent idea. But come on, that compaq whatever it is, looks as durable as uncooked bacon in the jaws of a hundred pound malamute. I will continue to wear my F1, thank you very much.

    • ETH (is that the manufacturer?)

      Actually, probably not - the ETH(Z) is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zuerich (Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule Zuerich). The "inf" part in the domain is for the computer science department (Informatik).

      Note that there's a second such swiss federal institute of technology, that one in french-speaking Lausanne, normally called EPFL (ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne).

  • Andreas Petzoldt's flying backpack.
  • Lousy in Practice. Simply stated, most avalanche victims are killed from blunt-force trauma.

    Suffice to say, being dragged down a mountain by a wall of snow going 200 miles an hour, carring assorted debris (rock, ice, other mountaineers, AOL CD's, etc.), hitting various hard objects along the way (rock, ice, other mountaineers, RIAA/MPAA representatives, etc.), is not good for one's health.

    Asphyxiation still represents a problem. But most are killed by the spin-cycle.
    • A good theory but uneducated opinion wins out again.

      Asphyxiation still represents a problem. But most are killed by the spin-cycle.

      Actually stats show that 32% of deaths are due to trauma while 68% die from asphyxiation.

      http://www.avalanche.ca/accident/trends.html

      A Slashdot, where the uniformed can act intelligent.

  • usefulness is questionable (Score:3, Informative)

    by david_bonn ( 259998 ) <.davidbonn. .at. .mac.com.> on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @11:53AM (#4956952) Homepage Journal
    [background: I am a frequent backcountry skier and have participated in avalanche rescues].

    Gadgets are fun, but getting away from too many gadgets is one more reason to go skiing.

    If multiple people are buried, you have much bigger problems than triage. With an avalanche transceiver, you find a buried victim by finding their transceiver -- well, duh. But this is done by measuring the relative signal strength, usually through an audible beep from the buried transceiver or sometimes from an LED display on the receiver. Of course, signal strength can vary bewilderingly depending on how deeply the victim is buried, the orientation of the antenna on the transmitting and receiving transceivers, and whether the victim and their pack are obscuring their transceiver.

    This is complicated. It isn't something you can figure out in the minutes after an avalanche. Lots and lots of practice is required to get any degree of competence.

    If you have multiple burials, you are almost always forced to go after the strongest signal first -- often you can't even "hear" the other signals until you find the strongest one. This implies to me that having vital signs is rarely going to enter into the decision-making process on whom to recover first.

    For backcountry skiers, I usually feel that if you have a multiple burial situation you've already screwed up.

    This might be of moderate use to avalanche control people (now there is a great job, explosives and skiing combined!), ski patrollers, heli-ski guides, and maybe mountain rescue organizations. As a product for the casual outdoorsperson I'm pretty skeptical.

  • The military already has combination 'locator + vitals transmitter' for troops.

    But can you imagine (no, not a Beowulf Cluster) a fire department with these? The fire chief would know exactly where inside the burning building his firemen are, and more importantly, he would know how they are doing.

    100 firemen die (on average) a year, over 80% of the firemen in the US are volunteers. Wouldn't it be a good use of 'homeland security money' to get this technology out of the pentagon (and the land of chocolate, numbered bank accounts, and red pocket knives) and into one of the most hazardous work environments?

    Ok, I'm getting off my soapbox. :-) Merry Christmas to those celebrating, Happy Wednesday to everyone else!
  • The best equipment for your work is, of course, the most expensive.
    However, your neighbor is always wasting money that should be yours
    by judging things by their price.

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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