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."

Comments

biotech

[Beatbyte]

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.

Careful!

[Lord Bitman]

"Be careful! it might be explosive!"
"You're right.. we'd better shoot some low-powered weaponry at it"

Can we fire the Dep. of Homeland Security?

[justkarl]

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?

Paint Check!!!

[Libertarian_Geek]

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!"

Think about it

[Pi_0's don't shower]

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...)

pretty cool

[Roskolnikov]

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.