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Life-Saving Baseballs

Posted by timothy on from the more-like-droids dept.

DeAshcroft writes "Researchers at the Penn State Acoustics Lab have developed life-saving baseballs. As described in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, the team put microphones and wireless transmitters into baseballs, which they toss into piles of rubble to find the (noise-making) survivors. The advantage with baseballs is that they apparently don't have to stop work on the pile to listen for survivors. So, remember, if you're ever trapped in a collapsed building, the basball is your friend. The college paper has a story."

2 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. Excellent 'cluster' interface. by torpor · · Score: 4, Interesting


    Such an elegant solution, using the 'cluster' configuration.

    I suppose things like this could be used for ship-wreck/plane-wreck situations too, where some sort of mass of floating balls is released during structural damage or hull-breach to be grabbed by survivors for tracking purposes.

    Maybe in Space this would be useful? Hull-breach in the dome, sections of which when destroyed by structural breaks, release thousands of tiny 'life-balls' which, when activated by a human, send out "SOS"...

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  2. They don't bounce much. by ptaff · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder why they used baseballs - yes they're more resistant than, let's say, tennis balls, and you don't want to crush the electronics inside.

    But if the ball is supposed to locate people who are stuck inside a pile of debris, I guess the deeper the ball gets, the better; and baseballs don't bounce much. Imagine throwing a SuperBall(TM) and a baseball inside an irregularly shaped tunnel 1 feet wide - which ball will get the deeper inside the tunnel?