Lifeguard Drone Rescues Swimmer in Spain | Hacker News Reader

Lifeguard Drone Rescues Swimmer in Spain

thedrive.com

83 pointsnradov53 comments

Thanks for sharing, I live a few km away from the spot and didn't hear. It's very fortunate that they managed to alert the lifeguard, because in most cases drowning is silent and discreet [1], unlike the movies. I wonder if either a patrolling drone or a onshore hi-res camera could use ML to recognize the signs of drowning and alert the lifeguard in case the person in distress is unable to do so, as usually happens.

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[1] https://www.popsci.com/identify-prevent-drowning

Once there are more safety drones, people will get used to indicating to them that they need help.

The Black Mirror version is that the drone is sponsored by a tv channel that prolongs the rescue for maximum drama.

I'd like to see it used for shark detection too. Maybe the drone could drop an anti-shark device into the water near any swimmers who are too close to a shark, according to the drone's aerial view. Adding an audio advisory would help too.

Considering the extreme rarity of shark attacks, I imagine those resources would be better spent elsewhere.

https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/shark-attacks/trends/frequ...

I bet you'd see a positive ROI given the profitability of other safety devices.

So many parents would pay an extra $5 to be at a drone shark patrolled beach.

I’d buy one to bring to the beach with me.

In Australia there have been talks of culling sharks or putting up massive nets along beaches. A deployable distraction or deterrent against sharks would probably be more cost effective.

They already do use drones for shark detection.

That's right, here's an article on the same site: http://www.thedrive.com/aerial/16913/drones-in-australia-hel...

The "drowning is silent and discreet" fact isn't very relevant here - no one was drowning, they were just at risk of tiring out and starting to drown in the near future. A flotation device delivered by drone would have to get quite lucky to help someone who was already drowning, while here the woman involved helps position the flotation device.

The woman puts on the lifejacket herself, but she's being held afloat by the man next to her. She doesn't seem able to kep herself afloat- the waves keep washing over her and she can hardly keep her head above them even with the lifejacket on.

Yes, I'm just saying that the drone was not involved in rescuing someone who was already drowning and there was no difficulty alerting the life guard because she was exhausted and out too far rather than unable to easily breathe. The dangers here were quite different than the commenter I replied to was bringing up.

No. Look closely. This is very shallow water. Some people are standing between waves. Im not sure we have the full story. She seems simply exhausted or hypothermic. A jetski also arrives almost immediately.

The first thing i noticed about her was that she was far to high in the water to be floating. He chest is visible above the surface. Nobody, even with help, can maintain that for more than a couple seconds. She is standing.

(Small waves breaking + murky water also means shallow.)

There's a man holding her up, that's why she's high on the water.

When I swim in the ocean I always tow a float behind me. It's mainly to be visible to boats, but if I get a cramp or something I can hold onto it and save myself from drowning.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/12/exclusive-branded-openwa...

Have you conceded an inflatable life vest, like in the airplane safety instructions? Pull the cord - get a float.

Unless it was designed for swimming, that would be pretty nasty. It would cause a lot of drag and would likely chafe.

A few swimmers do carry inflatable vests in a pouch. However I think the towed float is a better option since it makes you more visible.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2012/09/the-swim-it-in-depth-rev...

It looks like they had been taken by a rip current and the lady had exhausted her energy. In such a case one is very close to drowning. Most likely the guys managed to bring her back close to shore before the drone had arrived, at which point she received the lifejacket. Women are normally much shorter than men, so that could be a reason. The beach in the video tends to have uneven grounds with deeper areas (rip currents tend to take place at the deepest point, that is if you swim sideways you might step on higher grounds).

Still, a very decent solution if a drone can deliver a lifejacket before the jet skis/swimmers arrive.

Remember undertow -> swim parallel to the beach. If you watch the video people ~10 meters to the side were perfectly fine.

As I didn't know the meaning of "undertow", I looked at wikipedia, it says this :

>>> In contrast to undertow, rip currents are responsible for the great majority of drownings close to beaches. When a swimmer enters a rip current, it starts to carry the person offshore. If the swimmer understands how to deal with this situation, he or she can easily exit the rip current by swimming at right angles to the flow, in other words swimming parallel to the shore, or by simply treading water or floating.

OK, I read the same thing and the OP probably got it wrong, but does it really matter whether it's undertow, a rip tide or just a strong current or a wave pulling you away from shore?

The main thing to keep in mind is that if the current is too strong, you shouldn't try to swim against it, but try to go sideways or you'll exhaust yourself.

Based on recent research it appears that advice isn't always optimal. In some undertow (rip) currents the best technique is to tread water and wait for the circulating current to bring you back closer to shore.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2089696/everything-you-know-ab...

This is what I was told as a teenager 30 years ago on vacation in SW of France (Moliets-Plage). They told us to tread and wait either for the flow to bring us back, or for them to get to us (in a helicopter, usually)

Interesting. The main use case is getting a flotation device out to the person quickly to bridge the time it takes for the lifeguard to arrive. A secondary use case is shark monitoring, though given the rarity of shark attacks that seems more questionable.

The oldest article I can find discussing using drones to assist lifeguards is from June 2015:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/25/drones...

This all sounds pretty sane:

> "In extreme conditions like red flag, big surf, high winds, where you normally have trouble getting out to someone, you would be able to use it," said Dan George, the chief of Long Branch's beach patrol. George said drones could potentially be flown out at long range, a mile or two, to reach distressed stand-up paddle boarders, kite surfers or capsized boats. The cameras on drones could help locate submerged persons quicker, while microphones and speakers could enable lifeguards to talk to a person in the water if they were responsive. Some models can even deliver flotation devices. [...] George said drones could also be used to monitor the beach in the event of a shark sighting, like Seal Beach. [...] The price of the drones Long Branch looked at ranged from $1,300 to $7,000.

Yup, travelling by air is the right way to do it if the weather allows it. Much faster than swimming all the way towards your objective. With strong winds or high wages would not be the first choice and motorboats win in the race probably.

Now they should complete the drone providing it with a heated floater or a similar system to warm the people in danger of hypotermia.

I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to build a drone strong enough to carry a lifeguard the 200-300m effective range required and simply let him drop there and return. That would probably be the fastest and safest method. Although I wouldn't want one crashing on me.

Well, if the person's life was hanging by a thread, you would want to get the person out of the water asap, right? A 200-300m swim back while pulling someone will take a while. If the drone is there already why not let the lifeguard hook the person to the drone and let it fly back.

Totally agree!

Getting the casualty out ASAP isn't always the priority, particularly if they have a potential spinal injury. Getting them into a controlled and survivable position is paramount.

Usually only if they are unresponsive and not breathing are they extracted immediately regardless of risk or further injury.

Source: NPLQ training

But how often do you break your spine in the middle of the ocean? Maybe there's rocky areas where what you're saying makes sense, but as far as I know the danger is exhaustion and consequently drowning, or perhaps hypothermia.

Unfortunately a lot of that focus on c spine has been driven by insurance providers (public and private). The costs of someone surviving with a long term spinal injury are much higher than someone who dies.

In wildness first responder training they use to focus so much on c spine it was assured. If someone has an arterial bleed are you really going to make sure you are slow and careful with the spine or are you going to put a tourniquet on it as fast as possible? You should certainly be very careful with possible spinal injury, but it's not always the most important thing.

The amount of things we can do with drones seem to be quite extensive. I wonder if we could ever put pressure on the government to bring down trade barriers using by using near impossible to catch drones to smuggle goods in and out.

Yeah those steel tariffs will ultimately be brought down by drone transport

The cartels are already getting in on it to get around those pesky trade barriers on dangerously addictive drugs.

"The web page you were trying to visit is not accessible in your country."

Here's another article on it:

"This Wednesday, a group of seven swimmers located about 70 m (230 ft) from the beach at Spain's port of Sagunto found themselves caught in an undertow and being swept out to sea. After they signalled one of the lifeguards, an onsite Auxdron Lifeguard Drone was flown out to perform a rescue.

Made by Spanish startup GeneralDrones, the Auxdron features eight props/motors located on the ends of four arms, along with a watertight carbon fiber body and a maximum flight time of 34 minutes – that goes down to 26 minutes when it's carrying a payload of two inflatable life jackets.

In Wednesday's incident, shore-located operator Diego Torres remotely piloted the drone out to the swimmers. He was guided by radio communications with the lifeguard, along with a real-time video feed from the aircraft's gimbal-stabilized onboard camera.

Once the drone reached the swimmers, its video revealed that one woman in particular was really struggling with the current, so Torres dropped and guided one of the drone's tethered life jackets over to her. The jacket automatically inflated upon contact with the water, and was able to be disconnected from its tether once she had gotten hold of it.

Lifeguards on Jet Skis subsequently arrived to retrieve the woman and bring her to shore, with the Auxdron continuing to hover above the remaining swimmers, monitoring them and marking their location until they could also be picked up."

https://newatlas.com/drone-rescues-swimmer/55934/

or just a 2 minute, no sound video of one of the rescues:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEn_rDpMFq8

Ironically I can't watch this in Spain :/ however if I block the meredith scripts using uMatrix everything works fine.

I'm in Portugal and it works. Perhaps there's another video of it on Youtube Spain.

saving them from what? you can see in the end of video clearly there are people standing on solid bottom with shallow water not reaching even their waist without any need to swim

this is very very poor viral video, next time at least make actors pretend to swim in whole video and shoot in in 1.5m deep water instead of this 50cm beach, though thorough video you can already see many people actually just standing there instead of swimming

I get where you coming from. It's really easy to underestimate the rip current. This might be very dangerous, especially if you are not a good swimmer, it can take you off shore and drown you if you panic and waste your strength fighting it.

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

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rip+current

nothing is taking her off shore, waves are going towards beach, there are people standing, not swimming, all around here, including guy holding her legs and back after putting on safety vest, watch the video again, especially the end

this video was published by drone company and they made sure most outlets will include exact brand and model in the text body, some of them even in headline, once again very poor marketing attempt

Did you see the waves stopping at the spot they were at? It's called undertow and can surprise even strong swimmers. The incoming water needs a place to retreat, creating a current, often very local.

watch the video, especially the end, the guys around her are literally standing and waves are going to shore, nobody except the actress has any problem just walk to the beach

this video it's hoax or very bad promo

Yes, do watch the video. Everytime there is a wave, they all float up, because the wave makes the water so deep they can't stand anymore. And as to the woman herself, she's clearly unable to keep herself afloat- everytime a wave crashes on top of her, she goes under.

So what do you think happens if you're in chest-high water with waves taller than your height, exhausted and unable to swim to shore, or keep afloat, as she is?

The wiki for rip current starts with a pretty good gif. The gif explains why the people on the side hardly notice (sandbar location in the gif) while the people stuck in the rip nearly drown.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_current

A second thought is that you might not know how many people are lousy swimmers. The beaches are filled with people who hardly can swim but go neck deep.

[edit: removed a lot of unnecessary information]

You can easily drown in ankle-deep water. I almost did, last year, in a situation very similar to the one in the video and I've been swimming since I was a toddler and had my fins on that day.

Deceptively familiar situations where you think the sea looks safe when it's not, are the most dangerous, because you end up doing the totally wrong thing and exhausting yourself fighting the waves or putting yourself in mortal danger without realising it- until it's too late.

And just because people are laughing and playing in the sea a few meters away doesn't mean you're safe, either. People drown all the time in crowded swimming pools with dozens of people around them who are not, themselves, drowning.

Also, when there's a wave, the water is shallow for a while and then it's suddendly deep. And if the waves are a couple of meters high, it can be too deep. If you can't float at that point, you're toast.

Seems like you removed the description of your incident? I was curious to hear it - happy to know you made it out.

Cheers. I felt it was a bit too personal and unnecessary for what I wanted to say. But thanks :)

Sounds great, although scary. Under the pretext of saving lives, governments may deploy drones to track and arrest undesirable people.

I imagine videos like this will encourage broad support for drone surveillance.

You mean illegal immigrants? I’d be surprised if DHS doesn’t already do this on the border with Maxico.

In a similar spirit there was a recent Ted talk [1] where the guy was enthusiastic about doing image recognition on a global scale from satellite images. He argued it would allow things like tracking every ship in the world.

This surveillance world is coming gradually from every direction, and like a frog, we will wake up in a water which temperature we may not like.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/will_marshall_the_mission_to_creat...

Almost every civilian ship in the world is already tracked using AIS. Satellite surveillance helps to catch those few vessels who turn off their AIS transmitters to engage in criminal activity (piracy, illegal fishing, smuggling, violating trade sanctions).

I am sure they are very nasty and that law abiding citizens have nothing to fear from an orwelian surveillance!

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply. It's critically important to know where large vessels are at all times for safety and collision avoidance if nothing else. This isn't Orwellian by any means.

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