Technology
Technology can also be used to assist in the retrieval of people who fall overboard. Many GPS chart plotters designed for marine use have a Man Overboard button (MOB). This button is pushed as soon as a Man Overboard alarm is raised, causing the plotter to record the latest known position of the person overboard. This allows the boat to be easily returned to the fallen crew member even if visual contact is lost.
Several manufacturers make man overboard alarms which can automatically detect a man overboard incident. The hardware consists of individual units worn by each crew member, and a base unit. Some systems are water activated: when an individual unit comes in contact with water, it sends a signal to the base unit, which sounds the man overboard alarm. Other automatic detection systems rely on a constant radio signal being transmitted between an individual unit and the base unit; passing outside the transmission range of the individual unit and/or falling into the water cause the radio signal to degrade severely, which makes the base unit sound the man overboard alarm. Some manufacturers' hardware integrates with other systems on the boat; for example, it may activate a throttle kill switch or control the autopilot to return to the point of the downed member.
Read more about this topic: Man Overboard
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)
“One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Primitive peoples tried to annul death by portraying the human body—we do it by finding substitutes for the human body. Technology instead of mysticism!”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)