Team Geared Up

I never knew this, but eight pools in the UK have electronic lifeguards. The Poseidon system, which uses a matrix of underwater and overhead cameras that work by watching the depths of pools. I presume it works by sensing a motionless object as a certain depth for a certain length of time. Cool!

On wednesday a 10-year-old girl was saved from drowning by a computer system. The girl, from Rochdale, was at the deep end of the pool in Bangor, north Wales, when she sank to the bottom. The £60,000 system, called Poseidon, detected her on the pool floor and sounded the alarm.

One of the safety system’s four underwater cameras showed her sinking without any sign of a struggle into the 12ft 6in deep end.

Once she had lain motionless on the pool floor for three seconds, the computer sounded an alarm which also pinpointed which part of the pool the girl was in to the five lifeguards on duty. The computer identified the girl as being in distress within 10 seconds of her slipping under the water. From beginning to end, the alert took just one minute and 27 seconds.

Read more at the BBC

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