Citizens losing pairs of earbuds on subway stations and train tracks have become more common than ever. Panasonic is working aside Japan’s JR East rail group and working on a way to recover them. The company has built a cordless vacuum device that can quickly nab a loose pair of wireless earbuds, according to Yahoo Japan.
As Japan’s JiJi press noted, rail authorities make use of mechanical grabber to pick up missing objects like shoes or larger devices. Moreover, those AirPods are quite impossible to detect when they fall into track gravel. The vacuum gets around that using finger-sized tubes that can suction the buds out of tight spots, then hold them in place without sucking them into the vacuum body.
JR East said they had 950 incidents of dropped earbuds in 78 train stations between July and September. Normally, they are meant to be picked up immediately after the last train of the day, but a lot of people don’t have time to wait before the day runs out. This invention will be of great help to citizens because they can get AirPods immediately they fall into the track. And the problem isn’t just for Japan, it’s widespread in the US, particularly New York. “It happens all the time,” a New York MTA worker told the NY Post. “Just last week I had to stop a man from going down [to] the tracks to get it.”
TECH NEWS>>>>Bentley Intends To Sell Only Plug-In Hybrids And EVs By 2026
