As you swim towards the horizon, your legs suddenly cramp up leaving you splashing desperately to stay afloat. Your yells of distress and pain carry to the shores allowing a professional lifeguard to see that you’re in dire straits. Running toward the waters, the lifeguard snatches up a long, red object.

Instead of diving into the water to swim you back to safety, the lifeguard throws … EMILY into the water.

Controlled by the lifeguard, the robotic lifesaver rushes towards you at 28 miles per hour (45 kilometers per hour). The lifeguard presses a button and EMILY stops right in front of you allowing you to grab on. Then, the lifeguard steers you back to the shores saving your life.

This is probably the ideal scenario the Hydronalix developers of EMILY had in mind as they were completing the first version of the robotic lifeguard. EMILY or the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard, is said to save lives six times faster than the average human lifeguard. The robot is battery-powered and can travel 81 miles (130 kilometers) on a single charge. In 2011, EMILY will be totally automated and will also be equipped with a sonar device to scan movements under the water and find movements “associated with swimmers in distress”.

Tony Mulligan, the CEO of company Hydronalix, which proudly holds the motto for bringing out “new technology concepts for Maritime Robotics”, acknowledged that the robot lifeguard does not have the experience as an actual human lifeguard but expects that this device will “work alongside human lifeguards”.

(Courtesy of Hydronalix homepage)

There are a few, obvious flaws with EMILY.

To name a few, the robot lifeguard can’t exactly save an unconcious swimmer, nor can it provide an absolute hold for the weakened human to get past the waves in certain situations, and the vision of the lifeguard will be a concern as well as he/she has to manueveur the robot towards the drowning individual.

The 2011 design of EMILY may also have a few flaws concerning its sonar device. The sonar device, according to Hydronalix tries to identify a swimmer “in distress” and move towards them without a lifeguard controlling it. At a beach full of people, especially children, swimming and splashing the sonar device may incorrectly identify movements “in distress”.

Judging from the pictures released, EMILY has a propellor system but the entire robot seems to be padded.

The idea of EMILY certainly is new and interesting, at this point we will have to wait and see what Hydronalix can provide more to us in the future regarding EMILY.

The company declared that it will sell each unit for $3,500.