Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis can be very destructive. They can turn buildings and houses into a huge pile of rubble in a matter of seconds. Most of the times people get trapped in this rubble. The rescue team does intensive search operations to find these people. Sadly, sometimes, by the time rescue team locates a buried person, that person is no more.

Time is a very crucial factor in a rescue operation. The sooner they are able to locate a victim, better are chances of his or her survival. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL) in California has come up with a lithium battery-powered device called Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response or more commonly called FINDER.

FINDER works on the concept that beating heart and breathing sends out microwaves. These microwaves are reflected by the rubble and are immediately sensed by FINDER letting the rescue operator know that there is a living person inside the rubble. The exact location of the trapped person can be also figure out by a computer program which assimilates all the data received in the form of signals.

Now that is a good use of technology, isn’t it?