Unexplained Mysteries Discussion Forums > Computer saves girl from drowning

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whoa182

Sep 1 2005, 09:19 PM

QUOTE

Computer saves girl from drowning

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2141735/...s-girl-drowning

A 10 year-old girl has become the first person in the UK to be saved by a new computer monitoring system installed in a swimming pool.

The girl lost consciousness in the deep end of the Bangor Swimming Pool in Wales and sank 12ft 6ins to the bottom.

The computer software, which uses eight underwater cameras to track swimmers, alerted a lifeguard within 10 seconds and the girl was rescued.

Bangor is one of the deepest swimming pools in the country and the Poseidon system was installed in May 2003 by French company VisionIQ.

Poseidon matches the behaviour of swimmers in the water to a database of thousands of warning signs of a swimmer in trouble and sends a text message to the nearest lifeguard's waterproof pager.

"We realised after seeing Poseidon that CCTV technology is designed to revisit an incident that you have recorded, not to alert you to an incident," said Brian Evans, a leisure officer at Gwynedd County Council.

"The Poseidon system warns lifeguards in real time that something suspicious is happening, and notifies them of the exact location of the incident. There is no need for them to be watching screens."

The incident happened last Wednesday but images of the rescue have only just been released after the girl made a full recovery in hospital.

Five pools in the UK have the Poseidon system installed: Oxford University Sports Centre, The Pavilions in the Park in Horsham, Canons Leisure Centre in Mitcham and Leaplish Waterside Park near Hexham.

Computers / monitoring devices will be doing a lot more to help save people from many different things in the near future. Including monitoring for health problems in real time.

GreyWeather

Sep 2 2005, 10:19 AM

10 seconds? that seems awfully long in its time to respond

Purplos

Sep 2 2005, 02:25 PM

Hmm.... What about lifeguards watching the pool? Shouldn't they noticed that some girl went motionless and started to sink?

justcallmefox

Sep 2 2005, 02:57 PM

that IS kind of a long response time, but the fact that they have alarms on the bottom of the pool is pretty cool. that's a good idea, actually. now if they can just get the response time to be quicker....

Baku

Sep 2 2005, 03:03 PM

I think this is a pretty good system but I also think we shouldnt relay on this to much. 10 seconds is pretty long time, a human would have noticed faster then that.

whoa182

Sep 2 2005, 03:58 PM

Well clearly the life guards didn't notice that the girl was drowning and the computer had to warn the life guards. So the computer responded faster... Obviously we shouldn't rely totally on a computer to do this but it seems that the computer helped save her life and will help save many others.

I mean LifeGuards are not all that good, Myself and I know quite a few people that nearly drown at one of the water parks in Orlando FL . THe life guards did nothing!

Im also not sure about the responding time being quicker... If it was then everyone that went under water you would have alarms going off lol. THe computer has to decide whether the person might be drowning or not first and not detect everyone drowning because they spent 3 seconds under water.

10 seconds is very good

wrighty

Sep 2 2005, 07:32 PM

Thats amazing, but I do thing the life guards should be paying more attention anyway.

Raptor

Sep 3 2005, 12:20 AM

^With lots of splashing on the surface of the water it's almost impossible to distinguish anything below. If we're going to be saying "The lifeguards hould have seen her" than we may aswell say "The girl shouldn't haved drowned in the first place".

AztecInca

Sep 3 2005, 04:08 AM

It may not have been as quick as what we want it to be yet, but it did the job, when the lifeguards missed it so once all the bugs are worked out and its a whole lot faster this will really come in handy!

manticoreconfusion

Sep 6 2005, 06:45 AM

i dont trust it
wat if the lifeguards leave it totally to podesdion to help and call them and it malfuntions?

whoa182

Sep 6 2005, 05:29 PM

well its a back up system, it doesn't replace the life guard. So the LifeGuard still has to look out for people drowning otherwise he wouldnt be doing his job. It shows that without the computer the rescue would have taken potentially longer... So having this addition to all swimming pools is a good idea.

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