BOSTON (AP) – A 23-year-old inventor has come up with a tool to give mere mortals the powers of a superhero: the ability to zoom up a rope as fast as 10 feet per second and quickly scale the side of a building.

The battery-powered, handheld gadget is envisioned as a tool for firefighters and soldiers, and helped earn Nate Ball of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a Lemelson-MIT Student Prize to be announced Wednesday.

While he has practical applications in mind, Ball says it isn’t a stretch to compare the tool to the gadgets fictional heroes use to quickly climb to dizzying heights.

“It’s neat to be able to create a real-life engineering solution that has the actual functionality described in the fantastic situations you see on Batman, and with James Bond,” said Ball, an MIT graduate student who spends some of his spare time rock-climbing and pole-vaulting.

The invention grew out of an MIT-sponsored, Army-funded student design competition in 2004 to develop technology to help soldiers ascend rapidly.

Ball collaborated with three fellow MIT students to refine the design from the competition and create the Powered Rope Ascender, a product of the startup company they founded, Atlas Devices.

Using high-density, lithium-ion batteries, the device including its harness weighs 20 pounds and can propel a person up an anchored rope at 10 feet per second, Ball said. It also can be used to climb down.

The device wraps rope much the same way that a ship raises or lowers its anchor using a capstan and tightly wound rope. Specially configured rollers and a spindle continuously pull rope through the device. A tighter grip is produced each time the rope is wrapped around a cylinder and more weight is applied to the line.

“The challenge is making a mechanism that can continuously pull the rope up reliably with an easy way to clip it in, and without having it chew up the rope,” said Ball, a mechanical engineering student from Newport, Ore.

Scaling a structure using the device requires that the building be equipped with ropes anchored at rooftop level – a feature Ball says could be added to buildings as a safety measure.

A rescuer would engage the rope into the device, and then pull a trigger to control the rate of ascent or descent.

Only minimal training would be required to use it, Ball said.

“It’s kind of like making a jump that never stops,” said Ball, who has served as a sort of test pilot for the device, making about a dozen ascents on various testing towers.

Last week, Atlas Devices won its first contract, a $120,000 award from the Army to provide several prototypes.

The tool has potential applications for soldiers, firefighters, police and others to make rescues or complete other missions on high-rises or in canyons, said Lisa Shaler-Clark, an Army Research Office technology transfer specialist.

“There are some very compelling homeland defense applications,” she said. “It’s about as fast as an elevator, so it’s faster than using a traditional winch.”

Ball also envisions potential recreational applications for rock climbers, skiers and cave explorers. He expects the device to eventually sell for a little less than $10,000.

He plans to plow all the $30,000 in prize money from the Lemelson-MIT award back into his company.

The award also recognized Ball for another invention: a device to inject medicines without using a needle. The device is awaiting trials for potential use in animal husbandry, and potentially could be used in mass inoculation of humans.