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The Quintessential Sentry Gun

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the deadly-secure dept.

mollyhackit writes "Aaron and Ezra built an automatic sentry gun using an airsoft gun, some hobby servos and a webcam.The camera automatically identifies and tracks targets. They tested it on each other to make sure it worked; video included!"

20 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Just because Slashdot is now CSS... by bc90021 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...doesn't mean that everyone's bandwidth is going to be less. What's with linking a video in the story? Sadism? ;)

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    libertarianswag.com
    1. Re:Just because Slashdot is now CSS... by Lank · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Nope, this was on Hackaday earlier today, which is a slightly less frequented site than Slashdot. By the way, if you want your karma to go through the roof, just visit Hackaday occasionally and then submit the story here. I've been seeing quite a bit of redundancy lately!

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      Gotta get me one of these!
  2. awesome by Madd+Scientist · · Score: 4, Interesting
    wow, one of the first times i've clicked a "video included" link that actually worked. nice server.

    their image processing is pretty much perfect, so i'm assuming they took some liberties such as assuming the target is wearing a bright white shirt. show me this thing firing on someone in camo.

  3. Just a hunch... by 0rionx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm guessing that here in the U.S. you probably wouldn't be able to get away with keeping one of those in your home or business, since booby-trapping of any kind is illegal in almost every state: http://dictionary.law.com/default2.asp?selected=87 On the other hand, usually one is only held liable for injuries caused by a booby trap on one's property, so I suppose with some modification this could make for a nice non-dangerous way to deter burglars and such.

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    The Slashdot Limerick
    1. Re:Just a hunch... by ari_j · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Don't listen to cop friends about the law - cops know how to police, not how to answer legal questions. That said, this one got it right. And it's not just due to injuring yourself, but because it is indiscriminate in who it shoots. The law tends to refer to "spring guns" as they were usually set up using a string, a spring, and a gun pointed at a window or a gate. What happened too often were situations where you set it up to catch a burglar, but some kid loses his baseball in your yard and gets his leg blown off.

      Somewhere in this thread, someone asked about a "Trespassers Will Be Shot" sign. While such a sign is a nice warning, you still have to do the shooting, yourself. An indiscriminate shooting machine is not acceptable, because not all entries of your property that you didn't personally authorize are truly trespassing - the kid with the baseball is questionable as to necessity to retrieve his property, but it could be grandma, the police, a lost Jesuit, or your wife.

      There has to be a human conscience that decides whether or not to pull the trigger. Now, if you added face-recognition software, you could make the argument that it is not indiscriminate in what it shoots at, but I think that the law would be very reluctant to agree with you and you'd mostly be making that argument to Bubba to try to confuse him enough that he loses his erection.

    2. Re:Just a hunch... by vertinox · · Score: 2, Interesting

      While such a sign is a nice warning, you still have to do the shooting, yourself. An indiscriminate shooting machine is not acceptable, because not all entries of your property that you didn't personally authorize are truly trespassing

      What about a machine that warns you that it is about to fire? Fires a warning shoot and then explains you have 60 seconds to vacate the property.

      In truth indiscriminate shooting weapons would be military applications in which it didn't matter who you killed. Like those special facilities that have signs that say "lethal force has been authorized" or a less than compasionate government wanted to have easy ways to control the border.

      Actually come to think of it... Didn't the DDR have automatic sentry guns on the Berlin wall? If not, I'm sure they would have used them if such a technology became available.

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      "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
      -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
  4. "If we stand still it can't see us..." by ecko3437 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is awesome. I am already excited at the idea of building several of these and having a large scale airsoft battle in my woods behind my house over several acres.

    Though, I wonder how well it tracks for people who aren't wearing white ;) If I'm wearing camo or something and I'm out in the woods, will it pick me up? If I'm wearing a green shirt and its out on my lawn will it still target me or maybe just my pants?

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    -Eric Smith
  5. About time by the+pickle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    About time that technology caught up with the Janus Syndicate. *turns around and hits the power button on the N64*...

    p

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    In Korea, long hair is for old people!
  6. Here you go . . . by Rob+the+Bold · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The Scarecrow. Doesn't aim, just waits for victim to walk by before "firing", but should do the trick.

    http://smarthome.com/6120.html

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    I am not a crackpot.
  7. Now what would be cool... by scovetta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Colleges have that robo-cup competition. I think they could get a little more advanced with something like this. Each team has a bunch (maybe 10) autonomous vehicles that have a webcam, paintball gun, laptop, battery, etc. Capture the flags, robot-style.

    I'd tune it to watch that on TV. Until the robots get smarter and take over the world. We wouldn't have a chance. Until their batteries died, at least.

    --
    Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
  8. What a wonderful device for farmers! by t0qer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I grew up on several orchards as a kid. We were pretty much encouraged to wander the cherry, prune orchards from the age of 6 and shoot anything that moves.

    There's other devices for scaring off varmints. Natural predators like hawks, percussion guns, dogs, sprinkler systems connected to motion detectors, but nothing quite as eleborate and precise as this.

    The only downside I see it that the BB's aren't biodegradable, but why do they have to be made out of plastic? Perhaps a system that delivers fertalizer pellets and or water. That way you would be scaring off birds as well giving the plants nutrients.

    This may have been a crazy tangent of a post, but I'm just throwing out a possible commercial app for this if folks are looking for it.

    1. Re:What a wonderful device for farmers! by bronney · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We can't use fertilizer pellets because of how delicate these "toys" are built. The bb is fired with an compress air suction system based on a motor turning gears; which in turn run a piston back, and releasing that piston on a spring to the nozzle to fire.

      Anything that's not soild and hard will get deformed or sucked into the cylinder and mess up your gun. And don't start the "hey but there are paintball airsoft gun" thing. They break faster.

      There are biodegradable bb as siblings suggests. But on the contrary most are NOT biodegradable. The package says "bio-friendly" which is mis-leading. For some examples of biodegradable bb's check this: http://www.airsoftmechanics.com/reviews.php?aid=15 &page=3

      But the problem with bio-bb's are that they are not offered in the same weight-range as the non-bio-bb. Depends how you tune your gun, the wind condition, and the slopes, .25g vs .20g really makes a difference in battles. Another problem is the consistency of the bb's diameter. Bad tolerance = jammed gun. And the hardness of the pellets. Soft pellets or brittle pellets = jammed guns again.

      These so called "toys" (I quoted toys cuz they're not really toys hehe) are expensive if you dig deep, and you wouldn't want a frag bb in your piston and gears.

  9. Re:Second Amendment meta-discussion by deaddrunk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Europeans are quite a bloodthirsty lot, you should see our history.

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    Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
  10. USNA Sentry Tanks by KylePflug · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They had stuff like this at the US Naval Academy when I was there for the summer seminar a couple of years ago. IIRC, it was infra-red as opposed to motion-tracking, and was mounted on remote-control/autonomous tank tread things. It was paintball instead of airsoft, but same idea. I understand they use them on plebes in the last phase of Sea Trials.

    They also had a shoulder-mounted paintball gun that tracked with the suit's helmet and could be fired via a small remote that you hold in your hand, or hwatever. Nifty stuff.

  11. Re:How about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    For what it's worth, 3 students did the same thing in 2003 using Linux, OpenGL, and a paintball gun for their Robotics project.

    Could track a person, decide when to fire, and even had manual override for controlling the motors (pan, tilt, fire) by hand.

  12. Re:The Army will be all over this by The+Evil+Couch · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I can't speak for every piece of the Army, but I know we have remote controled machineguns in various calibers. best I know of is a .50 cal that gets mounted to the top of a HMMWV, so that the gunner doesn't have to expose himself to enemy fire at all, that I saw while I was in Iraq. he just sits inside looking at a monitor and controling it with a joystick. I kind of wish I had had one, but we only had the one for our battalion, so I had to shoot threats the old fashioned way.

    I remember reading on some (public, unclassified) site that we have at least prototypes of remote controled robots with various calibers of automatic weapons, ranging from 9mm to 7.62mm.

    I don't think the Army's that interested in completely automated systems, but remote controlled turrets is something Uncle Sam would dig.

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    The World's Worst Webcomic!
  13. A serious application by CrazyMik · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ok, this may be a little out there, but... what if you built one of these with a bit more, ok a whole lot more, image recgonnition and used it to fight invasive species in Australia? Could it be done?

    A few hundred of these suckers could fry all the Cane Toads. Put some lasers on them to blind the frogs and they would die from starvation. Or maybe microwave them (but they might jump away). You could do the same thing for rabits and foxes.

    Or pest control. Have it fry rats, or better yet, have it fry cockroaches, although I am sure they would develop a way to survive.

    Maybe this could be an open-source project to save Australian wildlife.

  14. Re:Little brothers ARE good for something! by hey! · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah. First rule of hacking: deal with dangerous objects safely, e.g. if you are making nitroglycerine, you do it in an ice bath.

    I'm not sure that this meets the standard though. The paintball mask isn't designed to stop a BB, although it probably will if its from a low velocity gun. According to the specs for this gun, the muzzle velocity is 200-280 fps. This is fairly low, but since the paintball mask isn't really designed for this, I think it's unnecessarily risky. They should have used a low velocity paintball gun.

    A BB in the eye is very bad. From a medical journal article: "Although most BB and pellet guns fire low-velocity missiles (muzzle velocity: 1,000 feet per second [fps]), they are still fast enough to penetrate the cranium, abdomen, thorax, and paranasal sinuses. (2-6) Approximately 80% of these weapons have muzzle velocities greater than 350 fps, and 50% have velocities of 500 to 930 fps. (1) A pellet velocity of only 150 fps is necessary to penetrate human skin, and a velocity of only 200 fps is necessary to fracture bone. (7)"

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  15. Already have auto-sentries by HangingChad · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Self-replicating, self-repairing, independent targeting capability, alert and attack modes, built in night vision system, able to navigate complicated terrain features and function in any weather.

    A rottweiler named Jaws and a Belgium Shepherd.

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    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
  16. Why not use an infrared camera instead? by Redfrost · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Would it be easier using an infrared camera instead of a normal web cam? Then you just aim in on the moving heat source instead of trying to analyze whole screenfuls of data. I'm just imagining a blue-ish background with a bright red shape moving around on the screen...then it wouldn't really matter if the person is wearing bright clothing or dark clothing.

    Or am I way off base here?