Emergency Response Teams May Be Getting a Gadget Worthy of Batman’s Utility Belt
This thing is the size of a power drill and about 100 million times cooler…
It takes about six minutes for a firefighter with a full load of gear to reach the top of a 30-story building by running up the stairs–and when he gets there, he’s tired. A group of MIT students have designed a rope-climbing device that can carry 250 pounds at a top speed of 10 feet per second. They have a contract to make the climbing device for the U.S. Army for use in urban combat zones, and they hope to make it available to rescue workers.
The MIT students who worked on this project have formed a company called Atlas devices to produce and market it. It weighs about 20 pounds.
Nathan Ball, Atlas’s chief technology officer, says the biggest design challenge in making the climber was a mechanical one. “We had to come up with a clever mechanism to grip the rope securely while not damaging it,” he says. The device relies on the capstan effect: the more times a rope is wrapped around a cylinder, the stronger the device’s grip on the rope. To take advantage of the effect, the MIT students had to make a device that could tightly grip a few turns of a rope while still rapidly advancing it.
This thing can also attach to the rope at any point. Which makes it all the more brilliant. The only thing it can’t do is actually shoot a rope to the top of a building.
Atlas Devices via Technology Review
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POSTED IN: Extreme, Gear, Technology, Video
2 opinions for Emergency Response Teams May Be Getting a Gadget Worthy of Batman’s Utility Belt
miss kitty
Feb 23, 2007 at 9:11 am
Hey, are you going to have a drawing for one of these? Also, a fireman in full gear doesn’t weigh more than 250lbs?
Wade Meredith (Ed.)
Feb 23, 2007 at 9:51 am
If I got one of these, I would keep it.
I’m sure they could enforce a weight requirement or drop gear for when they needed to use one of these in a specialized situation.
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