Facepalm: Information technology's abrasive plenty to lose your wireless earbuds in the dorsum of a sofa, so one can imagine the frustration of railway officials in Nihon who're having to pick upwards hundreds of the damn things from railroad train tracks as passengers accidentally drib them during their commute. The issue has become rather worrisome for authorities who have asked Panasonic to come upward with a vacuum cleaner-style device to rapidly remove these earbuds.

East Nihon Railway Co., also known every bit JR Eastward, says that near 950 cases of dropped earphones happened across 78 stations in Tokyo between July and September this twelvemonth. That figure, according to the railway company, made up for one-quarter of all items dropped during that menses.

The event, as The Japan Times reports, has get a headache for officials in Tokyo who often have to wait till the final railroad train of the day before they tin can start searching for dropped earbuds, something which they're finding particularly hard to recall from betwixt bits of gravel.

Station workers typically use a grabbing tool called "magic hand" to safely remove any droppings/objects from the tracks, but due to the minuscule size of an boilerplate earbud and the frequency of droppings, the task has become "burdensome."

It'south why JR East has asked Panasonic to develop a vacuum cleaner-style device that's better suited to picking up these stray earbuds. The visitor is currently testing such a gizmo in Tokyo's northern Ikebukuro station and has found it to be more than effective than a traditional grabber. Since the result has also been reported past other railway operators in the country, Panasonic will likely ringlet out a final version before long.

It'south easy to figure out why this is happening for train commuters. Wireless earbuds can often slip out of ears while getting on/off a train, which is why some first- and 3rd-political party apps have the ability to locate/track a lost earbud/device. A pretty useful feature to accept, as this user found out.