It may look like an overgrown duffel handbag , but EMILY will storm you . This Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard ( EMILY ) is a commonwealth - of - the - art , tough - as - nails robotic lifeguard , with some middling telling missions under its belt .
The 25 - lbf. , four - understructure - long EMILY gadget is made of a high - tech heart border by a shiny , buoyant jacket crown . Its jet railway locomotive can zoom it through the water at 22 mph . Inner works made of Kevlar and aircraft - grade composites make EMILY “ near indestructible , ” discoverer Tony Mulligansaidin a press financial statement . “ The devices can be thrown off a eggbeater or bridge and then driven by via outside control to whoever call for to be rescued . ”
Mulligan first envisioned EMILY as an unmanned aerial fomite ( UAV ) that could monitor the event of Navy sonar examination on whale . He got funding from the Navy ’s Small Business Innovation Research ( SBIR ) division in 2001 , and had just cut into in to the process when America entered the warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan . So Mulligan put apart his sonar labor and converted his UAV prototypes into military surveillance drones calledSilver Foxes .
Ten years after , the Navy granted Mulligan wise financial support to take apart existing Silver Foxes and use their parts to build unmanned control surface vehicles , with an oculus to weather monitoring and lookup - and - rescue foreign mission . From these parts , EMILY was take over .
In the last few years , Mulligan and his company have ship more than 260 EMILY robots to navies , coast guards , and hunt - and - rescue units in South Korea , Indonesia , Singapore , the United Kingdom , France , Mongolia , Brazil , Mexico , and Greece . EMILY recently proved its spunk in the waters off the Grecian island of Lesbos , where operators were capable to use EMILY to rescue nearly 300 Syrian refugees from overwhelm .
