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Hi Tech, Wireless Help for Climbers

Posted by michael on 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."

3 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. This may increase danger by flopsy+mopsalon · · Score: 4, Informative
    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?

  2. more info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

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

    Merry Xmas to all of you /.'ers

  3. usefulness is questionable by david_bonn · · Score: 3, Informative
    [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.