The Quintessential Sentry Gun

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!"

Comments

Cubicle Defense Mechanism

[No Salvation]

I doubt there is a single person here who didn't think, "hmmm I could use one of these in my cubicle."

Needs one more thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Hook it up to facial recognition software, put it on a mobile chasis, and then you've got something.

Re:Needs one more thing

[superpulpsicle]

Homeowner: He's a criminal I swear.

Police: Looks like a dead mailman to me.

Homeowner: Radar must have seen those free aol CDs.

Police: You shot him with 1 million bbs.

Homeowner: I didn't. Sentry did. Bad firmware. Bad!

Re:Needs one more thing

[Frogbert]

Hook it up to facial recognition software, put it on a mobile chasis, and then you've got something.

Yeah and perhaps some sort of powerful shield, and replace the gun with some sort of Sharkbrand(tm) Laser and add a speaker that barks "exterminate" or something. We could call it a doorleck or darlink, I don't know I'll let marketing figure it out.

Little brothers ARE good for something!

[imunfair]

I love how he used his little brother to test it.

"Just go stand out there in front of my sentry gun so I can see if it works"

At least he was nice enough to have him wear a paintball mask, some brothers wouldnt be nearly so kind. :)

Re:Little brothers ARE good for something!

[BrynM]

I love how he used his little brother to test it.

I was thinking of how many little brothers will know genuine fear after seeing the video while I was watching it. Being a big brother, I lauged my ass off as soon as the gun started firing. I suddenly wonder what my little sister is up to...

Re:Little brothers ARE good for something!

[Kyaphas]

It's an airsoft gun. The bb's are 6mm plastic. Much less inertia and penetration capability. Not that he doesn't still need a mask, but they're not as powerful as your run-of-the-mill 4.5mm steel bb's.

Just a hunch...

[0rionx]

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.

Re:Just a hunch...

[ari_j]

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.

"If we stand still it can't see us..."

[ecko3437]

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?

you'll shoot your eye out

[E8086]

It's all fun and games until someone gets shot in the eye, about 50 times if it empties the magazine on you. Then it's even funnier to everyone else if you get it on camera.

Second Amendment meta-discussion

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's just summarize the inevitable right-to-bear-arms discussion here and get it over with, shall we?

First, somebody will suggest how cool this would be with real guns; then a European will wring their hands at how any sane person could have the notion of automatically shooting other people or even possessing such things at all; an American will call the European a socialistic pansy; another American will call the first American a rabid, foaming gun-nut who should be put in a concentration camp with the other bad people; and finally links to statistics will be posted, proving that guns are both the cause of and solution to violent crime, in addition to being psychosis-inducing penis substitutes which should be carefully controlled for the children.

Finally!!!

[Wazukkithemaster]

Something useful on Slashdot :)

P.S. was that friggin night vision on the last test shot?

"It had him when he was in the shadows too..."

"AHHHH!!!!"

Lets break that down for you guys...

Step 1)Robots.
Step 2)Add Airsoft Guns.
Step 3)Find Younger Siblings
Step 4)... (explicative deleted)
Step 5)Profit!!!

Brilliant... *golf claps like an excited little school girl*

Re:CTRL-H Defined

[StikyPad]

Right, but the "joke" originates from actual incidents of old terminal programs storing the ^H rather than erasing the previous character. Occasionally, BBSes would have backspace set to something other than ^H. When someone would post a message, and they sent the ^H sig, their own terminals echoed a backspace, but the remote BBS simply logged the ^H as part of their post.

What a wonderful device for farmers!

[t0qer]

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.

Re:CTRL-H Defined

[commodoresloat]

Apparently, UNIX 101 was not over for the day...

Re:The Army will be all over this

[The Evil Couch]

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.