Bounce ball camera to help first responders
bounceimaging.com
bounceimaging.com
You torture me with 30 seconds of slow slide transitions and irrelevant videos (I know what a firefighter is, no need to show me), start talking about what you're making 30 seconds in, and finally show it to me 45 seconds in, with the end result 55 seconds in.
I know this sounds harsh, but you have got to tailor your value proposition to short attention spans. If I like it, I'll stay longer and watch more. If not, you don't want me anyway.
I'd flip most of the video around: a) condense the first 30 seconds into 1 slide with pictures of first responders, soldiers, firemen etc b) show them the end result and then how you toss the camera (or backwards). When this is done, you should be 10 seconds in. c) then build upon my excitement and talk about what you want
This is all assuming I even click the video, so just having a one-sentence summary above the video also helps. (I get that there is text below, but your header is huge and so it falls below the fold and I didn't even think to scroll down until now).
I happen to agree that the video is annoyingly slow to start but maybe their target audience isn't hyperactive Reddit distraction addicts. Maybe their research suggests buyers for emergency services like to be buttered up a bit before being pitched to. Without knowing that you're just speculating.
In any case, I doubt any such research happened :)
In the case of firefighting, it would be a lot less useful. We're not worried about poking our head around a corner. No one is shooting at us. How is this better than looking around the corner myself with a thermal imaging camera?
In many ways it's worse... Modern TICs have lots of useful features like giving you the temperature at a certain point on the screen. Using a TIC is also more complicated than simply looking at the picture. A single static image doesn't do me much good. I want to see how the heat is moving through the room, looking for signs of impending flashover, etc. The heat signature of a victim lying on the floor can be surprisingly difficult to distinguish from something like a smoldering blanket if you don't have a dynamic image to look at for a couple seconds.
The one use I do see for this is hinted at in the video (where it warns the operator of the carbon monoxide level). This _could_ be useful in HazMat situations (pack the thing with sensors for various hazardous materials). However... if you're close enough to throw the thing into a suspect HazMat condition, you're close enough that you need to be wearing the appropriate personal protective equipment... so why not use the handheld sensor you already have, instead of buying this (presumably) expensive remote sensor?
A rapidly moving camera should get a lot more pictures, a lot more angles and room coverage than a handheld one in a static location. Would be fascinating to hear a founder on this, how to combine all those images-- under desks, behind cabinets, under bed, etc.-- into something rapidly grasped by the viewer.
The UI would be tricky as well... Consider the conditions the user is operating in... Extremely poor visibility (no hi-res display (potentially solved by project on the facepiece directly)), bulky gloves (no touch interface), heavy gear (every extra pound matters), significantly restricted movement (tough to throw the thing in the first place).
I think there's a lot of progress to be made in this field in the near future, but I'm not sure this is it... Things like helment mounted TICs, and HUDs projected directly on the SCBA facepiece seem like they would be far more useable, and easy to implement..
Right now I have no way of figuring out what it is beside (a) inferring from the name, and (b) starting another browser that's more stable when playing videos. Also, none of what the product does is indexable by search engines.
I'm most interested in how they'll bring the price down though, since development of this product doesn't look cheap.
It looks like this would need to be priced similar to a disposable item. It's safe to assume that these ball cameras won't be retrieved even remotely as often as they're thrown -- imagine firefighters stopping on their way out of a burning building to retrieve their ball camera -- so the best way to convince potential customers to buy en masse would of course be to price them low enough that losing a bunch of the cameras won't be considered throwing money away.
I'm really curious what that price point would be in order to still turn a profit.
The calculus is if you Know that there are no one in a room in a fire you don't go in there and risk injury or death. One, one week stay in the hospital is about $105,000 ($15,000 a day) so they can be "expensive" and cheap at the same time. The parts will set them back maybe $35 per ball. And since they aren't mil spec they don't have to be enemy jamming resistant or able to withstand being shot.
In a residential setting (where the _vast_ majority of fire related injury and deaths occur, both civilian and firefighter), rooms are small enough that searching them isn't likely to be any slower than tossing the ball in and evaluating the image. Additionally, victims (especially children) like to hide (under beds, in closets, etc). I suspect this camera would have a tough time spotting them
A single static image of a room isn't going to terribly useful. Assuming you're using infrared sensors (if you're not, it's entirely useless), it can be surprisingly difficult to distinguish the heat signature of a victim from other objects in the room if you don't have a dynamic image you can look at for a few seconds.
For police or military, after you've cleared the area, just pick them up.
For firefighters, attach a long string/wire to it, toss it, and then pull it back.
A combination of the two technologies would be very cool.
EDIT: When I read photosynth, I was thinking of Microsoft Photosynth[1], which sketches pictures into panoramas. I should have read the parent comment a little more closely.
Also, since the camera is moving, one doesn't need to use multiple.
I'm skeptical that a stationary ball lying on the floor (or rolling into a hole) would provide better information. Of course, it's better than not having that.
How do you make the helicopter rotors so that they don't break the first time they hit something and also don't cut people's faces up. In many situations, have a flying helicopter in a small space can be much more dangerous than a ball on the floor.
The cost of RC helicopters is quite staggeringly low, and they are usually possible to repair. The blades can be painful if you fly into people, but I doubt people appreciate having balls land on them either. At least with an RC you could potentially see where you were heading and stop. If the use scenario is to send these in to places too dangerous to send people, I don't see much issue.
I don't think autonomous flying is necessary, but there has been research done to show it's possible (but as you say, not trivial).
I'm still unsure if a ball is going to work well, or whether it's just going to roll under a desk.
It's also not advisable to assume that the users would be highly trained beforehand. A major benefit of a device like this is the fact that it is a very simple unit that is easy to deploy to get a quick and easy view of the environment around a corner or at the end of a tunnel.
Additionally in fires you have a lot of air drafts from the heat, making controlling an RC device even more challenging.
Surely even at $500/ball, it'd still be cheaper and safer to use a system that requires close to no training. From the demo video, it seems that the ball also detects carbon monoxide - I imagine detecting other chemicals would come in extremely useful as well.
At a glance, it seems like there's a lot less that could go wrong, given the number of moving parts involved with the helicopter.
Throwing a ball is simple. Flying an RC helicopter is difficult.