Handcuffs have been around for many many years. Tho they restrain you; that doesn’t seem to be enough for inventive minds.
Here’s the futuristic handcuffs of tomorrow.
From Patent Bolt:
While the new system focuses on handcuffs, the inventors clarified that the new system could equally apply to ankle cuffs, straightjackets, neck collars, helmets and even facial restraints such as the one used in the film Hannibal.
The next generation handcuffs will be super high tech with built-in sensors such as accelerometers, potentiometer, inclinometer, biometric sensors, camera sensors and more. But the kicker to this invention is that these future handcuffs will be able to combine standard restraining mechanisms alongside those that could deliver a powerful electric shock to detainees and/or administer medications to sedate or irritate them.
The cuffs are designed to restrain “the bad guys,” but it sure looks as though there’s potential here for abuse in the form of mild torture. This kind of invention will have to be carefully monitored and legislated to exacting standards so that the “good guys” walk the line on this one.
The patent is called “Apparatus and System For Augmented Detainee Restraint.”
The patent states that in various embodiments, safety mechanisms may be included in the control system of the restraining device and/or controller to prevent a detainee from receiving greater than a predetermined nonlethal amount of electric shock in a predetermined period of time.
In another embodiment, the detainee interface receives electrical impulses from the detainee’s heart, and returns them via EKG/EGG sensors to the sensor components for analysis by the control system. If the detainee’s measured EKG is not measured to be in a safe range for administration of a shock (for instance, if fibrillation or arrhythmia is detected), the shock from the electric shock component will be suppressed. In an alternate embodiment, if the measured EKG signal from the detainee interface indicates a health issue, the control system may send a message to an external entity through the communication interface, indicating that the particular detainee is experiencing a health issue. In this manner, an external entity may avoid or suppress sending an activation signal to the restraining device, and/or summon medical care for the detainee.
These shocks might be “activated by internal control systems or by external controllers that transmit activation signals to the restraining device.”
This progressive tool is the brainchild of Scottsdale Inventions.
And while you might be shocked by the idea of handcuffs with these capabilities, might you remember;
cnet – Patent Bolt points out that this patent also allows for the idea of a substance delivery system. Yes, these handcuffs might also be used to, well, inject the detained with who knows what — to achieve “any desired result.”
Clearly, the desires of the detained and the detainer might differ. Yet, this patent allows for the possibility of the substance being in the form of “a liquid, a gas, a dye, an irritant, a medication, a sedative, a transdermal medication or transdermal enhancers such as dimethyl sulfoxide; a chemical restraint, a paralytic; a medication prescribed to the detainee, and combinations thereof.”
Yes, you really did read the word “paralytic.”
When available, one can only wonder how many “accidental!?!?” deaths will occur with law enforcements’ new toy.
