Panasonic Has Built This Clever Device to Rescue Fallen AirPods from Japanese Train Tracks

In a sure sign of how popular Apple’s AirPods have become, Japan’s biggest railway plans to begin using a specialized vacuum cleaner designed specifically to retrieve AirPods from its train tracks.

A new report from Yahoo Japan and The Verge notes that East Japan Railway, or “JR East,” which covers the Tokyo and Tohoku regions of Japan has now begun working with Panasonic to develop a vacuum-cleaner style device that will help to pick up stray earbuds dropped onto the train tracks — something that happens surprisingly more often than you might think.

According to The Japan Times, this has actually become a big problem for the rail company, with nearly a thousand earbuds ending up on the tracks at 78 of the best stations in the Tokyo area between July and September — a number that actually makes up a quarter of all of the dropped items.

The problem seems to be with AirPods and other wireless earphones slipping out when people are boarding or disembarking from crowded trains, or sometimes even simply being dropped while waiting on the platform. Up until now, officials have been using a grabber type of tool to attempt to collect various objects that fall onto the rail tracks, but AirPods are particularly difficult to retrieve this way as they often get stuck among the gravel in the tracks.

The process is also burdensome since of course workers can’t search the tracks while the trains are actually running, meaning that while larger objects like hats and smartphones can be picked up more quickly, digging for AirPods often requires waiting until after the last train of the day.

A Common Problem

Of course, this problem isn’t unique to Tokyo — a report last year explained how New York City’s Metro Transit Authority (MTA) has grown wearisome of picking up AirPods from subway tracks, to the point of issuing an official warning to commuters not to wear the expensive items when getting on and off trains.

The problem is also exacerbated by the fact that many passengers have resorted to taking extreme and often dangerous measures to try and retrieve them from the tracks; as one subway worker told The New York Post, “They are more valuable to commuters than their lives,” noting that he has on several occasions had to stop passengers from going down onto the tracks themselves to try and retrieve a fallen AirPod.

Other commuters take somewhat more cautious but creative approaches, such as one woman who live-tweeted her own adventure to save her AirPod from the tracks using a broom handle and duct tape.

The MTA recovers nearly 20 AirPods per month from the tracks at the request of passengers who have dropped them, although they also just use eight-foot grabbers that aren’t dissimilar to what the Tokyo subway workers have been using up until now.

However, the inventive Japanese seem to have now come up with what looks like a much better solution to the problem by tapping Panasonic to build a specialized suction-based device that can be used to quickly retrieve fallen AirPods more quickly and precisely. The device uses finger-sized tubes that can suck the AirPods out of tight spots, holding them in place without actually pulling them into the vacuum’s body.

The new tool is already undergoing trials at JR East’s Ikebukuro Station, where it’s been proven to be highly effective, making it likely that the East Japan Railway will be soon ordering many more of the units, and we can imagine that officials at New York’s MTA and other major transit services are likely looking on with interest as well.

That said, it hopefully goes without saying that if you lose an AirPod on a set of subway or LRT tracks, you most definitely should not make any attempt to retrieve it yourself. Let the professionals handle it for you, or simply suck it up and buy a replacement — Apple only charges $69 to replace a single lost AirPod, which is considerably cheaper than the cost of meeting up with the front end of a speeding train.