Edited for brevity. Hat tip: Viking Pundit.
An M.I.T. graduate student has invented a hand-held gadget that lets you climb up and down walls like Batman. Called the Powered Rope Ascender, it's a spiraling, battery-powered winch that winds its way up a rope at up to 10 feet per second. "We've already gotten an order from the military," inventor Nathan Ball told FOXNews.com, though he wouldn't specify how many the Army asked for in the $120,000 requisition.
Most winches need to be bolted to the top of a building, and then lower cables or ropes to the ground to which an object or person is fixed. The winch then turns horizontally, retracting the cable and whatever's attached to it. Ball's device reverses that scenario. It works from the bottom up, or top down, attaching itself to the person or object being lifted. It then climbs the rope or cable, drawing it through a spiral ratchet as it moves along it like a bead on a string. The battery-powered gadget is envisioned as a tool for firefighters and soldiers, and helped earn Ball $30,000 as part of the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, announced Wednesday.
Ball expects the device to eventually sell for a little less than $10,000. If the device becomes widespread, buildings could be equipped with ropes to allow firefighters to ascend rapidly and then lower rescuees to the ground. A rescuer would engage the rope into the device, and then pull a trigger to control the rate of ascent or descent. Only minimal training would be required to use it, Ball said.
Link to video of the Climber in action at story link. |
