Late last month, off Beach 108th Street in New York City’s Rockaway Beach, the New York City Fire Department’s Robotics Unit helped rescue a distressed swimmer by doing something that would have sounded like science fiction not too long ago: sending flying robots over the surf to deliver flotation devices while lifeguards battled their way out to the victim.
And it wasn’t a one-off: It was the second such rescue along Rockaway Beach this summer. In June, the Robotics Unit deployed drones to help two swimmers in trouble. Then, in July, another swimmer found himself at the mercy of the rip and swell. Once again, the robots went to work.
The playbook is becoming pretty compelling: Find the swimmer from above. Get something buoyant and fluorescent to them immediately. Keep eyes on the victim. Then let the human beings, the people who actually have to get in the water, finish the job. In the latest rescue, the drones dropped not one but two inflatable safety buoys into the water, buying precious time as NYC Parks lifeguards made their way through increasingly difficult surf.
“As surf conditions deteriorated,” the New York City Fire Department reported on its Facebook page, “FDNY members, using drones, quickly located the swimmer and deployed two inflatable safety buoys, providing immediate flotation until NYC Parks Lifeguards reached the person and brought them to shore.”
There’s a certain elegance to that division of labor. The drone doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t have to fight its way through a rip current. It doesn’t have to make the very human calculation of whether it can safely reach somebody who may already be panicking, exhausted or disappearing beneath the next set.
It just goes. And once it gets there, those fluorescent-yellow floats do more than keep a swimmer’s head above water. They become highly visible targets in the chaos of breaking surf—essentially giant, floating exclamation points telling rescuers, There! Right there! That matters. In poor visibility, losing sight of a distressed swimmer for even a few seconds can turn a rescue into a recovery.
“The Robotics Unit is a force multiplier during water rescue operations,” the FDNY’s Lt. David Melendez said. “Our ability to quickly locate victims, provide real-time intelligence to the Incident Commander and deliver emergency flotation devices within moments gives responders valuable time and additional options when every second matters.”
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Force multiplier is probably the right way to think about it. Because nobody is suggesting that a quadcopter is about to replace the lifeguard. Quite the opposite. The technology is useful precisely because it gives the humans doing the dangerous work a better shot at doing it successfully.
And that distinction is worth keeping in mind as drones, autonomous systems and AI increasingly worm their way into everyday life. We can roll our eyes at the machines. We can complain about how every new piece of technology seems to come with a camera, a microphone, a subscription fee and an app. We can wonder, with some justification, whether we’re getting a little too comfortable outsourcing our judgment to algorithms.
But then somebody gets caught in a rip current off Rockaway Beach. And suddenly a flying robot carrying a yellow life buoy doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous. It seems pretty damn useful. There’s also something reassuringly old-school about the way this particular technology is being deployed. The robot isn’t making the rescue. It’s buying time for the people who can. The lifeguards still swim out. The lifeguards still make contact and bring the victim back to shore. The machine simply gets there first. That may be the sweet spot for a lot of this stuff: not replacing people, but extending what they can do when circumstances get ugly.
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The FDNY says the technology provides responders with “additional options when every second matters.” After three rescues this summer, that’s more than a theoretical proposition. It’s three very good arguments for keeping a few robots in the toolbox.
Still, there’s a catch, and it’s one the Fire Department itself is eager to emphasize. Technology is no excuse for getting cocky around the ocean.
“We remind New Yorkers and visitors to swim only when lifeguards are on duty, follow the posted safety signs, and to stay alert to changing water conditions,” the FDNY said in a statement after its most recent drone-assisted rescue. In other words: Don’t make the lifeguards (or the drones) work any harder than they already do.
Fair enough. For all the dazzling machinery, cameras, sensors and artificial intelligence now hovering above our beaches, the best rescue is still the one that never has to happen. So here’s to the lifeguards, the people willing to charge into the same water everyone else is being warned to respect. And, what the hell, here’s to their new flying sidekicks, too.
Let’s just hope we never get to the point where municipalities start figuring that they can replace lifeguards with drones altogether. Let the robots bring the flotation, but let the humans bring everybody home.
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