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Paintball Sticky Sensors
Eddy_D writes "The EETimes has a story about a group of undergraduate students at the University of Florida (Gainesville) that have developed a sticky sensor, fired from a paintball gun, to sense explosive compounds in suspect objects at a distance. The project is funded by Lockheed Martin (Missiles and Fire Control group), who is rushing to deploy this new technology to soldiers in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The goal of the project, funded by Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Missiles and Fire Control group (Orlando, Fla.), "was to help our soldiers detect improvised explosives or even chemical weapons from a distance far enough away so that they would not be hurt," even if the material detonated, said Greg Ivey, an aerospace-engineering student who graduated from Gainesville this month. A soldier with a laptop computer can monitor the projectile from up to 240 feet away.
Wouldn't this be a great combo for small biotech creations?
Pictures, chemical analysis, sample collection etc. would be a snap!
(fairly) Remote analysis of questionable objects would be a snap if you shot the device on it, enabled it with your wireless remote, and waited until it reported fully to your laptop.
Get paid to code OSS
"Be careful! it might be explosive!"
"You're right.. we'd better shoot some low-powered weaponry at it"
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
So, basically, we can deploy a shitload of these into Iraq to find the WMD's...
All jokes aside, it sounds cool, you could use any kind of sensor with it. How about one with a frequency counter?
This came to mind when I read the article:
Soldier: Thinks to himself "Hmm, suspicious vehicle parked over there." [Pop]..[Splat]..
Terrorist hidden behind car: "Paint Check!" Soldier: "Ref!, Paint Check, I mean Bomb Check that suspect!"
Terrorist: "No fair, he over shot me." "and Crono that gun!!! Is this freedom? It's got to be at least 305fps!"
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Although you've obviously intended to be funny, it is a common misconception that elaborate explosives can usually be triggered by a "nudge". This is hardly the case -- think about nuclear weapons, which require an elaborate creation of slow neutrons, or even simple explosives that require the mixing of two compounds.
The force of a missile blast with compounds inside will be sufficient to mix the two compounds (usually, but even then, not always, as plenty of missiles are "duds" for this reason). Shooting a golf-ball sized detector-weapon at this is hardly dangerous. The reason they build explosives so that they're hard to set off is so they DON'T accidentally detonate while being constructed or transported.
That said, this is an extremely cool invention (and maybe I'm biased considering where I'm based...)
Having played a bit of paintball I can say if the velocity is cranked up and can (and has) puntured skin.
Tear gas paintballs already exist (heh) but I always thought it would be cool if traffic cops could tag your car with a paintball transponder...... blow through a speed trap? why chase em?
mark em and wait for them to stop either because they thought they got away or because they've realized the car is marked.
OR maybe you could use them to deliver a russian style sleeping gas..... (just don't drop em) its easy to get a paintball into a window..
You could crank the gas up and fire a wooden dowel (sharpened no doubt).
just rambling but this is pretty cool and paintball guns have gone a long way from the 'marking trees for forestry' beginning.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
... as the guys at my local paintball place, we're in big trouble.
Ok, not strictly on topic, but from the article tagline of PORTLAND, Ore, the team doing the discovery in Gainesville, Fla, and the writer having a Spirit One e-mail address that is the same ISP I use, I find it very interesting that this article could be written 3000 miles away from the actual research.
Plus, I noticed it because I had hopes of getting my hands on one of the prototypes when I saw the Portland, OR tagline- hoping that the team working in Florida was a mistake and that the balls were being produced at some paintball place close to me. I'd LOVE to have a civilian/spytech version of this tech- say a small audio sensor that could be fired from a paintball gun to stick to somebody's window.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yup right on the nose and 18 incher SP , also my old Sheridan Carbine with a really scratched brass barrel, dono why but man was that thing a longballer. I acually had 2 kills in one game not even able to see the target I was pinned down and all I could expose was my gun, another fellow about 5 yars away was having gun problems but could see so he was directing my fire, long and accurate.
I built a modified barrel once that had a slot cut in the top, then a rubber stru in that slot, I had honed it outBIG , the rubber strip would impart a SERIOUS backward spin on the ball the thing would hook UP wildly, I could lob balls twice the distance of anyone else, the only problem was it used to love to break balls and wouldnt clean well so after you broke your first ball you had to change barrels.