After the
earthquake hit, rescuers in the village of Chautara got two prototype
units of the device called FINDER, or Finding Individuals for Disaster
and Emergency Response. The core of the device is a system that bounces
microwaves around to “see.” Crucially, it can discern faint heartbeats
and breaths in people buried under several feet of rubble.
In this
case, FINDER was apparently able to detect the heartbeats of two men
each in two different collapsed buildings. The men had been trapped for
days, under as much as 10 feet of rubble.
The details
of the rescues are otherwise scant, so it’s hard to say exactly what
would have happened without FINDER. Still, it shows the FINDER works out
in the field and not just in controlled test situations. We hear about
the potential in new technologies all the time—with FINDER, some of that
potential just became reality.
Previously/Related
NASA, JPL develop low-power radar Finder to locate earthquake survivors | abc7.comspendergast: NASA and Homeland Security Test Radar for Locating Disaster Victims
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