Smart Can, 2018.
The Smart Can empowers lifeguards to focus on their most critical jobs—saving lives!—by autonomously collecting and aggregating ocean rescue data in real-time. Though it is hard to believe in this hyper-connected day and age, lifeguards are currently expected to hand-record all information following each and every rescue occasion, which can number upwards of 50 on busy days. Because this practice requires lifeguards to divert their attention away from the water, it is at best unrealistic and at worst unsafe. To remove the burden of collecting rescue data from lifeguards, we have equipped the standard Burnside buoy (“can”), a device uniformly relied upon by lifeguards to tow swimmers to safety, with the ability to automatically send a signal and record data every time a rescue occurs. Our Smart Can is augmented with capacitive sensors on both handles along with a water sensor, which—when activated simultaneously, meaning that a rescue is in progress—communicate with the lifeguard tower through WiFi. In the future, we envision all lifeguards using Smart Cans and thereby creating a dynamic heat map of rescues helping to inform lifeguard resourcing, provide information on “hot zones” and rip tides, and empower the public with transparent real-time data.
Fiona Duerr
B.A. Urban Studies, 2018
Nour Eldien Eldifrawy
B.S. Materials Science & Engineering, 2018
Purva Juvekar
M.Eng. Mechanical Engineering, 2018
Christina Pappas
MBA, 2018