You've surely seen the videos  point-of-view shots from cameras attached to firefighters' heads as they prep to storm a burning building, save the people inside, and blast every inch of space with as much water as they can get their hands on.

The problem? The premise of the videos sounds super-exciting  and they are  but the video itself invariably ends up showing exactly what firefighters experience when they rush into a burning building. Which is to say, you can't see anything through all the smoke and haze.

That's a problem for firefighters, especially when or if a tactical entry hits the proverbial fan and they're forced to feel their way through a blackened, burning house in order to accomplish an objective. And it's exactly why researchers at the University of Sheffield's Centre for Robotics have come up with a new helmet design that uses the power of touch  specifically, touch feedback  to give firefighters a kind of ultrasonic-like awareness of obstacles within their smoky environments.

"When a firefighter is responding to an emergency situation he will be using his eyes and ears to make sense of his environment, trying to make out objects in a smoke filled room, for example, or straining to hear sounds from people who might need rescuing. We found that in these circumstances it was difficult to process additional information through these senses. Using the sense of touch, however, we were able to deliver additional information effectively," said Tony Prescott, professor and director of the Sheffield Centre for Robotics, in a statement.

The helmet that the researchers built uses ultrasound sensors to detect the presence of nearby objects  like obstacles, or even a big ol' wall. It relays this information to the helmet-wearer in the form of vibrations. Specifically, the vibration pads that have been placed around the inside of the helmet. The closer a firefighter gets to an obstacle, presumably, the more a pad will vibrate to let the firefighter know that something's nearby.

The premise, inspired by rodents' use of whiskers to sense objects around them, isn't quite as cool as the setup used by Bruce Wayne in, say, The Dark Knight. Nevertheless, if the researchers can find a commercial partner to help them bring the helmet from prototype to product, it could be an invaluable addition to firefighters' arsenals  and give them a much-needed "eye in the dark" of-sorts.

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