Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings | Hacker News Reader

Robots on Lake Michigan beaches to prevent drownings

mlive.com

99 pointsrmason118 comments

If it's $12k and requires an operator this seems more of a band-aid than anything. Where are the operators going to come from? And for a lot of places the operator + device probably pays for 3 lifeguards or swim instructors.

Nothing is going to get better until we start trying to get out of the hole and improve the average person's ability to swim and make decisions in open water. I used to be a lifeguard and swim instructor and it has mostly felt like things have gotten worse and worse over the last 20 years. Fewer and fewer places to swim, more and more places just made everything a wading pool or a splash park to reduce liability, and after a generation of this there is an undersupply of people who can teach others to swim. Now some municipalities in my area are trying to ban swimming in open water. They closed all the pools to save money, it gets hotter and hotter and more people who can't swim go in the oceans/rivers/ponds/lakes to try and cool off. A lot of the people who never learned to swim make extremely poor decisions when they go into open water or use a small boat. The answer is not to fine them for going in the water.

It's pretty frustrating to think about all this after watching the Olympic trials this past weekend.

>> A lot of the people who never learned to swim make extremely poor decisions when they go into open water or use a small boat.

And a great many of those poor decisions are somewhat based on drugs/alcohol. The kid drowning because in a rip off a popular beach is rare. The grown man drowning stuck under his own dock, even in his own pool, on a friday night is not. We shouldn't deprive kids of water access because grownups make poor decisions while high.

Just another example of the US’s excessive liability culture that is gumming up the gears of society.

My alma matter (which is directly on a lake) has been gradually banning all unsupervised swimming for students because someone gets blackout drunk and drowns themself in the lake every year.

I think it's a tragedy; I spent a lot of my formative time enjoying the lake and the outdoors (not to mention it being one of the few healthy ways to escape the stress of engineering school).

The school is also gradually eroding all of the student run outdoor clubs (sailing, mountaineering) because they aren't directly controlled by the university bureaucratic system. Young adults today are having that taken away from them and replaced with nothing.

There's a highly dubious serial killer theory that exists simply because so many young college men drown while drunk:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory

I heard a stat once that most adult male drowning victims had their fly down. This points to someone very drunk trying to pee into a body of water at night. One should always pee away from open water. I recall the suggested distance 100 feet for pee and more for number two.

What's interesting is that we may be causing much more loss of life with these bans than we are saving.

We ban or severely restrict many physical activities then we wonder why childhood obesity is so high and why so many kids have metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular issues.

Since the link is indirect we ignore it and a heart-attack is just considered bad luck.

Swimming is not the only form of cardiovascular exercise and open water is not the only place to swim.

Of course, there are still non-banned activities but it's not only swimming. Cheerleading, football, skateboarding, even lifting are risky activities and do have some chance of injury.

It's easy to cite the injury stats for these and use that as a reason to avoid, but my point is we rarely look at the other side. Kids' interest differs and the more activities we ban, the more we curtail the set of potential interests that get kids off the couch and outside.

My point is that no one is trying to "ban swimming" - it sounds like the university is banning "unsupervised swimming," a proposal that seems more nuanced and might merit discussion of its precise implementation than preventing people from going to the pool.

Also, it sounds like the problem is the school's administration is behaving tyrannically for its own institutional self-perpetuation and a lot of the bans are not actually motivated by saving lives.

I get that while modern society is often overprotective, but this sort of hysteria about hysteria seems to be un-nuanced and one-sided. I mean, you want to talk skateboarding, apparently they're letting kids compete these days and 9-year old Ema Kawakami became the very first person to land three 900s in a row, something that Tony Hawk spent years trying to accomplish.

https://twitter.com/XGames/status/1802378553985499425?

The problem is the university never considers the other side. What is the cost of banning unsupervised swimming? Has Phelps really never swam/trained unsupervised?

The issue is the visibility is very one-sided. Everyone reads about the rare case where a kid drowns while unsupervised swimming. No one reads about the hundreds of thousands of kids that do it with no issues.

Let people take risk if they understand it and accept the risk. The university should not be held liable but the kid should not be prevented. Risk is often the price of freedom.

Michael Phelps swam in pools and not in lakes. The university is likely banning unsupervised swimming only in the latter.

> Everyone reads about the rare case where a kid drowns while unsupervised swimming.

It doesn't seem to be all that infrequent when it's happening on an annual basis.

Anyway, ultimately the danger isn't even necessarily a swimming issue, so much as college men getting drunk and going near bodies of water (to swim or otherwise).

Short term vs. long term effects.

I once went on an organized swim with wild marine mammals. What struck me was how many people on that trip could not swim and only relied on buoyancy aids and snorkels - I mean, guys, clue is in the activity title!

To be clear, this wasn't some swimming with captive dolphins, we were a few hrs out of port, in the middle of nowhere, in deep water.

> What struck me was how many people on that trip could not swim and only relied on buoyancy aids and snorkels

I get the relationship between buoyancy aids and being unable to swim.

But snorkels? If you can't swim, a snorkel doesn't do anything to help you. What a snorkel helps with is making it more convenient to see things that are underwater.

A buoyancy aids doesn't necessarily keep your head above water on its own. With a snorkel you can float head down.

I think we just need to be ok with the fact that people will die. Trying to attain a zero incident or zero death policy is completly unrealistic.

Some of you may drown, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make!

I know its tongue in cheek, but in practical terms, there is negative consequences for pushing the zero drownings. To achieve zero drownings, we have to have zero risk. the only way for zero risk is to eliminate it (i.e. ban swimming). However, banning swimming has many unintended consequences (swimming is great exercise, swimming during boat use is important during collisions). At some point, we will encounter water in ways that require swim skills.

Drownings are tragic, however, we can't 100% prevent things without severe negative consequences.

People can swim in bodies of water without fierce currents.

People drown in swimming pools all the time.

People drown in bathtubs all the time...

There are only two obvious ways to minimize risk: teach people to swim or prevent people from swimming. Guess which one is more cost-effective?

Since you can't stop them from swimming, it's teaching them to swim.

The GP post was "stop them from going into dangerous areas", which is why I pointed out _swimming_pools_ would meet the definition of "dangerous".

My point is that limiting swimming in certain areas is hardly the same thing as banning all swimming, it just feels like there is an alarmism about alarmism and perhaps there can be nuance and self-reflection from all sides of the debate.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40784425

Tool's Ænema is now playing in my head.

Learn to swim! Learn to swim! Learn to swim!

Luckily none of the narrative here is about zero drownings.

Or more precisely, people will express targeting zero drowning, but they're not making the logical jump you're pointing at. The device in the article is someone pragmatic, lifeguard situation in most places is pragmatic, there would need to be a crazy shift to get people to agree to a more absolute stance.

> Luckily none of the narrative here is about zero drownings.

> Or more precisely, people will express targeting zero drowning, but they're not making the logical jump you're pointing at.

Um, compare this comment, left hours before yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40779917

> Fewer and fewer places to swim, more and more places just made everything a wading pool or a splash park to reduce liability, and after a generation of this there is an undersupply of people who can teach others to swim. Now some municipalities in my area are trying to ban swimming in open water.

From the same comment:

> They closed all the pools to save money

It comes down to economics. I share the commenter's assessment that there might be fewer places to swim than before, but I think it also comes from fewer people interested in swimming in the first place, which creates the vicious circle.

To draw a parralel, there's also fewer skate rinks in my region, ski resorts also closed in significant numbers. There's just not enough demand to justify the cost, and while lowering the requirements could partially help, I don't see it working even mid-term, and certainly not long term.

On liability, I'd suspect that's not the real issue (is the town actually liable if you drown on your own swimming (= with a swimsuit and clear intent) in an unmarked body of water ?) and it might be more on the image and keeping away some demographics. Basically the same level of care as forbidding RC toys in parks.

I would never own a swimming pool due to the ginormous sums in liability judgments.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/steilacoom-to-pay-...

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/jury-awards-13-mil...

I can't read the first article, but judging from the second:

> The sidewalk is “perennially covered in water and algae,” according to the complaint. Other Queen Anne residents testified in court that they had also fallen at this location.

It reads to me like the sidewalk was a public danger, the building owners were under the hook to maintain it but never cared, until literally getting sued.

What am I missing ?

Maybe watching one's step?

I get the feeling that people would react differently if it was related to cars.

For instance a plane of rolling rocks right in a corner that would screw with tire grip and have several cars fall into the valley because of it. Would you see it as an issue with drivers not being skilled enough to keep control under adverse conditions ? Or request the maintainer of the road to do its job and fix it ?

There was an incident where a driver drove through a barrier and onto a bridge that was out, and crashed. Google maps directed him across the bridge.

Who was at fault there?

A basic tenet of driving is you should be looking where you're going.

That said, streets should be made reasonably safe because there are always drivers who don't pay attention. But that doesn't mean we should pay those negligent drivers.

As for the sidewalk, the city should have forced a fix for it. That's a separate issue from paying the stepper.

You can read the first article. https://archive.is/txCN0

A summer camp run by the city government left a group of 9 teenagers "unsupervised" next to a lake. I feel safe in saying that a lake cannot constitute a public nuisance.

DJ McCutcheon, one of those teenagers, "was underwater for about six minutes before bystanders rescued him" [after which he subsequently died], strongly suggesting that he was unsupervised in only the most technical sense.

I would have to agree with WalterBright that Steilacoom didn't do anything unreasonable here. The idea that 13-year-olds can't be trusted not to kill themselves if left - not even alone, but away from an adult who is officially responsible for keeping them alive - for six minutes,† is completely absurd.

The legal trouble appears to have arisen mostly from the fact that leaving the group of teens "unsupervised" violated a formal written policy of the camp, not from the non-fact that it involved some kind of wrongdoing or recklessness.

† They were left for much longer than six minutes, but since 100% of the problem occurred within a six-minute window, a standard that aimed to solve the problem would require smaller periods of "unsupervision" than that.

Thanks, so the town was sued for managing a summer camp where the supervisor couldn't supervise the kids, and it was a structural problem (if was alone peddling 12 kids)

> so the town was sued for managing a summer camp where the supervisor couldn't supervise the kids

Only in the same sense that if one of them had slipped in the shower, hit his head, and died as a result, that would have been equally the fault of the town for not adequately supervising the showers?

If they were supposed to watch after the kids in the shower, well yes.

There was an incident a few months ago about a school van: one of the kids at the rear of the van slept or didn't step out for whatever reason, the driver didn't count the kids and shut the van and went away. The kid was too small and too weak to properly ask for help when it realized it couldn't get out, and died in the bus.

This would be a completely random incident, with no one at fault, if it wasn't for the explicit responsibility of the driver to get the kids out of the bus.

A family wouldn't have the same responsibility, a parent bringing their kids and friend to some game and making the same kind of mistake might also not be at fault. Being a professional with a written explicit responsibility to watch after the kids makes it a different matter.

PS: in the case of the article, I assume there must be a law about not leaving the kids unattended outside in the first place, with a minimum ratio (x adult supervisor for y kids), whatever the circumstances, body of water or not.

> PS: in the case of the article, I assume there must be a law about not leaving the kids unattended outside in the first place, with a minimum ratio (x adult supervisor for y kids), whatever the circumstances, body of water or not.

...that is definitely false, and a truly wild assumption. Why would you believe that?

13-year-olds wander around towns unattended all the time.

Adult to child ratio is a thing. e.g., for the ratio in an institution for up to 16yo kids:

https://www.careinspectorate.com/images/documents/4334/Guida...

> 13-year-olds wander around towns unattended all the time.

That's in their private time, which is not the case in the article.

Literally yes! We have education, signage, warnings, red flags, etc... and yet people still do dumb shit and get themselves killed. Swim at your own risk, as they say.

Frankly, the more you idiot proof things the ‘better’ they make the idiots.

Life is at your own risk, don’t do anything too stupid.

In ALL of the great lakes, 45 people drowned last year. I have no idea what the drownings near shore was, but I mean, millions of people live on the borders of the Great lakes. 45 is pretty damn good and I think resources are better spent on other things.

And how many of those are young kids ? 1 is already too many

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/s0514-vs-drowning.ht...

No, 1 is inevitable no matter what you do. "Won't somebody think of the children" is not an argument.

Is it though? Death is an inevitability. Impossible to optimize the world for zero deaths. It’s a fools errand.

The problem is that once it is widely accepted that death is inevitable, that number will jump up from 45.

No it won't. This isn't like designing better brakes or something. Humans have free will and shit happens.

Sure it will. Not immediately but gradually over time. If we decide it isn't worthwhile to prevent drowning deaths, educational and informational programs will go away. Novices won't fully understand the risks. Programs like my lakeside park has where free life jackets are available to borrow will disappear. People who might have considered swim lessons won't bother.

Seattle has a zero traffic deaths by 2030 initiative:

https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs...

Of course, the only way to achieve this is by having zero cars.

Airplanes are designed with a maximum fatality rate in mind, because mandating zero means mandating either infinite cost or zero airplanes.

> For seven years now, the city of nearly 60,000 people has reported resounding success: Not a single automobile occupant, bicyclist or pedestrian has died in a traffic crash since January 2017, elevating Hoboken as a national model for roadway safety.

https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-dayli...

I like the idea of the curb bump-outs. Intersections where you cannot see the cross traffic are definitely higher risk.

> Mike McGinn, the mayor at the time, said he wanted to recalibrate the public’s expectation of road safety to make it more akin to their thoughts on airplane safety, where no fatality is considered acceptable.

That isn't true. There is an FAA standard.

No. The standard is zero. That's why the FAA investigates every crash or safety incident no matter how small. Realistically, the number will never be zero but if we don't put in the effort to improve constantly, safety will stagnate.

> The standard is zero.

This is simply incorrect. The FAA has a standard of getting the death rate below a certain figure per million flights, not zero.

>> Nothing is going to get better until we start trying to get out of the hole and improve the average person's ability to swim and make decisions in open water.

Couldn't agree more.

I remember growing up and my parents required myself and my brothers to take swim lessons all the way through junior lifesaving course which was the last course the city offered and you had to pass all the lower classes in order to get into the lifeguard class. These classes were always taught over the Summer and every class had 2-30 kids in it. The lifeguard class was slightly less around 10-15 kids, but still a large class.

I remember wanting to teach my daughter how to swim. The local pool didn't have lessons and neither did the YMCA, so we had to do one of these "mall-type" lessons where some company had a pool in some strip mall and you had one instructor and like 3 kids in the class. In an hour, then had maybe seven or eight reps of learning different techniques. I was just stunned it had changed so drastically. I remember being in the pool for almost two hours every day, every morning for my Summers, getting ten to fifteen minutes on each technique day after day. I remember riding on some rickety old school bus at 7am with a bunch of other kids I didn't know.

I don't know if its because there is no value for cities or the Y to take swimming lessons on any more, or the money and liability is too much. Either way, kids are not prepared to deal with being out in the open water, either in a pool or out in more dangerous areas like the ocean.

Goldfish has been doing this a lot in the Seattle area, but we only get 30 minutes and it is often 4 kids. Our YMCAs offer classes as well, but it is still 30 minutes with a few more kids, so not much different.

The pandemic really pulled a number on delaying swim lessons, so there is a huge backlog along with a lot of kids who aren't catching up yet. My 7 year old is afraid to do water slides still, and he has been in class for about 9 months now. I know we got to that level more quickly when I was a kid.

Using the term "robot", which gives the impression of some kind of automation here, is the disconnect here I think. In the end the operator is probably just using a remote from the beach side.

Looking at the actual demonstration of it, it makes some sense to me. Maybe not not at $12k plus some kind of support contract with it, but it makes some sense.

A couple of things to think about:

One big part about trying to save someone in the water, especially water where you can't stand in, is "throw, don't go". That person out there will likely pull you under and drown you, even if they don't mean to. This makes it so the thing you "throw" has a hell of a lot more range.

That thing ripped through the water pretty quick to get to the person drowning. A lifeguard wouldn't be that fast to get out there. Having them quickly ready to toss in and have a lifeguard in a tower with good visibility get out there to a swimmer that just needs a stable float and help coming back in. Getting to a person struggling in the water before they go under is very important especially in water that isn't very clear.

With how fast it was going, I bet it would also do well to help pull someone in that's struggling to fight a current, something a lifeguard would also have a hard time (sometimes nearly impossible) doing.

Perhaps some kind of precision artillery/guided rocket would work as well. If you just need to get floatation device to swimmer, going through the air might work well (if the wind isn't strong, of course).

For 12k, just attach a flotation device to a big octa-drone and drop it from the air. Then you can stay on station and use the camera to guide rescuers to the person. You could probably even drag a line out to someone attached a flotation device and reel them in.

Dartmouth college (USA), had a requirement that you must pass a swimming test to receive your degree. ( Obviously - if you didn't know how, there were free lessons.) They have recently dropped that requirement! ( After more than 200 years.) Why? At least with the old rules, you always knew that if a person was a Dartmouth grad, you could push them in the water. Or, at least, not worry about boating with them.

In (ex) Yugoslavia as kids in kindergarten I attended, we were required to take swimming and skiing lessons and pass test. Later in the primary school same thing with orienteering. It was all masked as fun activities, and truth be told they were, but now I see the bigger picture. I'm still putting my kids through those as well; It's both fun and damn useful.

These days, you can't really push anyone into the water unless you're ready to pick up the bill for whatever non-waterproof electronics they current have on their person.

It's hard to explain to young people exactly how or why it was, once upon a time, perfectly acceptable to toss people into the nearest body of water with no explanation needed or offered. I think we lost something along the way :D

Williams College (US school similar to Dartmouth in culture but smaller) had the same requirement for over 100 years. It was removed in 2022 largely out of concern that it had "disparate impact" on non-white students. Now those students are free to graduate without the embarrassment of being taught how to prevent themselves from drowning: https://williamsrecord.com/461123/news/faculty-votes-to-scra....

Most Chinese universities still have this requirement, but my wife was able to pass the test without knowing how to swim (the instructor didn't really pay attention during the test). We fixed that before we went snorkeling on our honeymoon to Bali.

> things have gotten worse and worse over the last 20 years

My kids and I are trained and experienced in open water and lake swimming. Still, every time we go out, we use one of these:

https://www.google.com/search?q=swim+buoy

I've had the experience of being in a large lake with very high winds. It felt like being in an angry ocean. Having a swim buoy provided for a few opportunities to stop, chill, catch my breath and plan my route.

You have to respect, not fear, water. Fear means you are not rational and likely have no ability to control outcomes or make sensible decisions. What you need if your SCUBA gear malfunctions 75 feet down is to be rational. Anything else can kill you.

When I taught my kids (and a few other people) how to swim, the first skill they had to learn was to be able to float/bob in the middle of the deep end of the pool for one hour. Can't touch the bottom. The only way you are going to do that is to first learn to relax and, to some extent, be one with the water. Once someone realizes they can just stop and bob in place without moving much, their relationship with water changes dramatically.

From there to swimming just means slowly adding speed and direction. Style doesn't matter. Once they can stay in the middle of the pool until they are bored silly, learning how to move through water efficiently is the next logical step. The entire experience, if taught well, is very organic. More importantly, it teaches people that they can survive in water and that they have the ability to pause and use their brains.

> Fewer and fewer places to swim, more and more places just made everything a wading pool or a splash park to reduce liability

True enough. We live near a lake. I am good friends with the lifeguards from years of my kids being in the Junior Lifeguard program. They also know me from kayaking in the lake during Santa Ana winds (full dry suit and PFD).

A few years ago I was walking around the lake during a nice afternoon. I was walking in water up to my ankles. It felt good.

One of the lifeguards I knew well, came up to me on his boat to let me know that was illegal. He could technically fine me and even have me arrested if I refused to abide by the rules. Like I said, he knew me, so it was more of a conversation than a threat to action. He didn't like the rule any more than I did. However, they (the lifeguards) always told me that people do stupid shit at the lake and several have drowned over the years. And nobody wants to see that happen. So, nobody can even touch the water except where the beach is open and you have half a dozen lifeguards on duty.

Brilliant.

Your desire that everyone learns to swim is laudable but as with all useful skills it takes work. Our completely distracted society is loosing skills like map reading, making change, driving manual, tying knots(still learning) ... (Sounds like a reason for Scouting and 4H) I will even posit shoelace tying given all the Velcro shoes.

12K is a lot for ROV (other comments suggest the could be cheaper ones) but the good news is the operator has had 10,000 hours practice on a Xbox. The Engineer/PM/Accountant in me hopes the ROV is reusable and will be used over many years spreading the cost out over time saving many people.

Hopefully the saved will come to Jesus (pronounced "heysous"), I mean the local teen working at the swimming pool who has a knack for teaching adults to swim.

depending on the public funding present, it can be seen as a safer alternative. to replace having people responsible to risk their lives to save those who fall by accident or those risking their lives without taking precautions.

this to me seems like how one should make it mandatory for everyone to learn how to drive a car if you want to sit in one, or drive a boat for being on one in the lake in the first place. swimming is cool but achieving this is much more unrealistic than attempting with this otherwise half-measure.

This isn't really a robot, more of just a remote-controlled boat. Still cool and a great idea for helping people who are drowning, of course. But seems misleading to call it a "robot", which (to me at least) implies some level of autonomy and more tech than you'd find in toy RC cars from 30 years ago.

Industrial "robots" often (generally?) have very little autonomy. It's helpful to not be constrained to the human form.

What is a robot? An automated laborer.

Industrial robots are autonomous: they do not require an operator.

An RC car requires one.

Many follow a sequence of predefined triggers. They're as autonomous as a belt-fed machine gun, or an internal combustion engine.

ROVs are piloted. https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explainers/technology.html

UAVs? Also robots. Even if they're piloted.

Bomb Disposal... Robot.

An RC car? Probably a robot.

i thought was just a backpack until it took off

The price tag also seems like the people want it to be marketed as a robot. You could strap a motor and RC controller to a floatation device and waterproof it for less than a couple hundred dollars. Why do things that are meant for safety always have to be insanely priced?

> Why do things that are meant for safety always have to be insanely priced?

When your product fails you may be liable for an injury or death.

You could also put the operator on a jetski directly

While greed is surely some of the answer, I’d imagine liability also plays a part. If your device fails to save someone, you could be a target for litigation.

Yeah, if you look at the photos it's just just an RC boat with some stuff strapped to the top.

Speaking of beach safety, this reminds me that I've been meaning to buy one of these. https://kingiistore.com/

I totally understand that not everyone wants to wear a life jacket all the time, me included.

Caution to anyone who clicks this link: mute your speakers first, or else you'll have to deal with blaring obnoxious music via an auto-play video that isn't visible without scrolling.

What browser are you on that allows autoplaying video?

Firefox on Windows autoplayed the music, fwiw

I love this. An incredibly simple design for instant buoyancy. I'd think the device could be more affordable if there was additional competition. At $80 price-point it should include a small light (and/or sound) strobe that triggers for locating people in the dark. Gas cylinder refills are incredibly cheap and available everywhere. Makes a lot of sense to keep these around for open-water group swimming adventures, with swimmers of mixed strength.

I'm not sure thinking of the robots as "increasing safety" is a useful mindset. They increase the chance of rescue. If you needed one in the first place, it's because you unintentionally neglected safety well before they deployed the robot to you.

Anyways.. as an aside.. if it's just about getting flotation devices out to them faster, why not a "life jacket cannon" mounted to the beach? If you really want to make it something to write home about get the guy who was dropping hats on heads the other day to make a robot that drops life jackets on the heads of people flailing about in the water.

Take a page from every sports stadium in the country... instead of launching T-shirts, launch a foam vest of some sort. Clearly you have an issue with hitting someone in the head with something hard, but probably the bigger issue is launching something that isn't very dense through the air.

Quad copter that flies out seems ideal.

This is a semantic argument, but defining "safety" as mitigation and prevention of harm is valid.

Of course it is, which is why I said "not a useful _mindset_." I'm not arguing the semantics, just suggesting that allowing yourself to use them may alter your behavior in negative ways.

If the pandemic taught us anything (which it really, shockingly, didn't) it's that moral hazard is less of a risk than Chicago School economists would have you think.

Introducing mechanisms to keep people safer rarely yields the feared perverse behavior, so just introduce the bit of safety and keep a wary eye out for the perverse behavior.

Driver behaviors once the risk of being stopped by a police officer went away during the pandemic beg to differ. Many of those misbehaviors continue today as new habits even after enforcement has resumed to varying degrees.

This feels a bit like blaming the victim. There are any number of things that can go wrong which may or may not be under your control. Specifically, the Great Lakes are more like seas than lakes. They have rip currents that can unexpectedly get you into trouble.

The robot brings you a flotation device. You should have one of those already. You should be wearing it if you're on the water for exactly the reason you've stated. Almost no one actually does this.

I've lived and fished on the lake for years. It's great for recreation. Way too many people do so entirely unprepared and often drastically underestimate the impacts of alcohol out on a boat in the hot sun.

Does the US have regulations around this? Here in New Zealand a boat must carry a life jacket for every person on board, and kids must wear a life jacket at all times. On vessels over 6 metres all people onboard must wear a life jacket at all times, unless the skipper has performed a safety assessment and advises they don't need to (e.g. on a ferry it's extremely unlikely anyone would have to wear a life jacket, but a charter fishing vessel may).

> Does the US have regulations around this?

I would be _very surprised_ if we did not have regulations about this, similar to seat belt laws. But the problem is probably enforcement. Nothing stops people from having a life vest on in port, and then taking them off once they are "away from the nannies" or whatever excuse people use when drinking.

I have only been on a boat rarely, but I don't recall seeing any kindof police on jetskis or boats that would go check on whether people had safety equipment on and then ticket them.

The US has regulations on all of this but they are routinely ignored by people who can't swim but own boats.

Small boat owners are required to have the life jackets on board but they can be hidden under the seats of a boat or inside a hatch and that will be OK even when you are inspected by the coast guard. Small children are the only ones required to wear their life jacket.

Larger vessels have to have the life jackets but no one wears a life jacket. Most of these vessels the captain will explain where they are but the crew would be required to get them out in an emergency.

Most of the small boat owners I've known wouldn't have much chance of retrieving life jackets from fastened compartments on their boat if it flipped and they were thrown from the boat.

One of the worst accidents I've seen was a small commercial lobster boat on fire. The crew were all hanging off the back of the boat without their life jackets and had pointed the boat into the harbor. Luckily the coast guard was there to save the day.

Federal law requires all individuals under the age of 13 to wear a life jacket when underway. State laws vary. Enforcement and adherence are poor.

The only place I've ever seen operators make a shtick is commercial boat tours. Nobody cares if you're out fishing or drinking with the boys.

Yes. There's a patchwork of state laws, and there are federal Coast Guard requirements that cover states without their own laws. Generally, children have to wear life jackets, and there needs to be one for every adult on board. Depending on the state, adults may be required to wear them on certain types of boats or when transiting over certain underwater features.

The robot in the article seems to be mainly focused on swimmers, who usually wouldn't have a flotation device, rather than boaters.

We wouldn't need seat belts if we simply didn't crash.

Seatbelts don't save the lives of pedestrians either.

No floatation devices are required for swimming.

The robots were a donation from a family that lost their daughter going out swimming two years ago.

https://www.wndu.com/2024/06/11/water-rescue-drones-donated-...

    ST. JOSEPH, Mich. (WNDU) - Emily MacDonald and Kory Ernster were just 19 and 22 and on a family vacation when their lives were cut short at South Haven’s South Beach on Aug. 8, 2022.

    Since then, their families have worked tirelessly for education and legislation related to water safety.

    As a part of these efforts, the MacDonalds and the Ernsters donated two E.M.I.L.Y. rescue drones on Monday afternoon to lifeguard crews at St. Joseph and New Buffalo beaches.

    “It’s just a coincidence that it’s named E.M.I.L.Y., and Emily was the beautiful girl that fell victim to drowning on that day, but it just works out to be a perfect tribute,” said Stephen Ernster, father of Kory.

There are many reasons why a life jacket cannon is a terrible idea. How do you get perfect accuracy ? People that are drowning can’t swim anymore in many cases, they barely have energy to stay on the surface. So you can’t be off by 10 meters.

They also won’t have the energy to put the life jacket while already in the water. And while life jackets properly equipped around your torso make you float correctly, barely resting your arms on a life jacket is not terribly buoyant.

You need to account for wind, not just to aim, but also because the life jacket will drift away. And as it happens strong winds are responsible for rip currents and waves which is very often what causes drownings in the first place, so wind is the default environment, not an edge case.

Waves and surface currents have a strong chance of carrying away the jacket before the drowning person can get to it.

A system that can be course corrected to account for all of those parameters seem the best, its rigid, so will provide buoyancy even when just holding on the device, it’s also big enough to support more than one person, many drowning events involve more than one person (often someone that was initially trying to help end up getting themselves in trouble).

How about a flying drone that drops an inflatable from a few meters above the struggling swimmer?

How about using a cheap floating platform? One with a more efficient operating mode, larger payload capacity, less moving parts, safe failure modes...

Honestly the drone probably wins in all those categories today and the drone doesn't have the problem of needing to navigate choppy water, has a bird's eye view, and can't accidentally slam into the swimmer on a bad wave.

And you can buy them off the shelf, hell you can buy a drone right now today that can physically lift the person out of the ocean.

These exist and have been saving lives for at least 6 years: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/lifegua...

Costs 20x as much as this robot. It does have the advantage of being used successfully once.

The drone used in that situation is the "Little Ripper Lifesaver" which supposedly sells for around $50k[1].

From TFA, the cost for the boat was around $12k. That means this is about 4x more expensive, not 20x. That doesn't include the droppable inflatable boat but that is probably not going to break the bank either.

1: https://www.insidehook.com/culture/little-ripper-rescue-dron...

knowing my luck, they would hit their aim perfectly, and I'd be knocked out.

T-shirts and hats don't fly too straight. Robot paddleboards can steer.

Good. Finally. So much more efficient than a human on a paddleboard.

I wonder if it a drone could complement the technology by quickly dropping a flotation device while this robot or a recuer arrive to escort them.

Lifeguards on some beaches in CA use rapid-deploy personal water craft like a Seadoo.

https://archive.is/Kal3q

Thank you! I got a “disable your adblocker” blocker..

"Robot" is a little misleading for basically a remote controlled boat. Definitely very useful.

It seems like having real drones monitor the water and these robotic boats could make a difference over time.

An AI lifeguard seems like a tractable problem, making it possible for human guards to cover a lot more area.

Number one criterion for finding a good beach to swim: A prominent sign saying "Swim at your own risk: No lifeguard on duty."

Indeed. The Lake Huron beach I frequent has no life guard. Also, no sign.

seems like it wouldn't be that hard to have a lifeguard spot someone with a laser and then a drone drop a life jacket on that spot. They could just use the laser until the drone has the coordinates of the reflection and then start swimming while the drone flys ahead and drops a life jacket at least somewhat close.

if that doesn't pan out then pivot and sell the tech to the military replacing life jacket with a grenade of some sort.

Reach. Throw. Row^H^H^H Robot. Go.

Throw Row Arigato Mr Roboto

for saving me again...

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