Slashdot Mirror
Listening Robot Senses Snipers
Dr. Eggman writes "Popular Science has a brief piece on the RedOwl, a brainy-looking flightless robot that can 'read a nametag from across a football field and identify the make and model of a rifle fired a mile away simply by analyzing the sound of the distant blast.' For a paltry $150,000, the machine utilizes robotic hearing technology originally developed by Boston University's Photonics Center to improve hearing aids to sense a shot fired and pinpoint its source, identify it as a hostile or friendly weapon, and illuminate the target with a laser visible only with night vision. The RedOwl, built on an iRobot packbot platform and controlled via a modified Xbox videogame controller, can figure out the location of a target 3,000 feet away, allowing troops to call in a precision air strike."
That video game AI snipers are cheaters!
Why would you call in a precision air strike for a lonely sniper?
Aimbot =(
I hear, therefor I am. Nice robot, they should put an IED sniffer on it too. Call it the Bloodhound.
"No one will really be free until nerd persecution ends."
What about arabs who shoot guns in the air to celebrate? Carnage!
I would guess you can buy something like 150 good protective body armors for the price of this thing.
If I was a soldier sent to an area with snipers I think I would prefer first to have plenty of Kevlar, this thing would then come second.
I think it is some time ago, but I seem to recall some kind of news about the soldiers not having enough body armor in Iraq, if this really is true, I think this should be put first on the budget instead of buying this kind of fancy equipment that might be helpful to the soldiers in hunting down snipers, but also maybe would slow their progress down. In a fast retreat (even just a short one) you would probable have to leave these 150K$ slowly moving along slowly on it's own in enemy territory.
The article doesn't say much about the weight of this thing though.
so what happens when this thing screws up? My car backfires, and next thing I know there is a cruse missile with my name on it.
is called Biomimetic Systems. It was the result of the thesis work by a former BU grad student Socrates Deligeorges. I have seen the robot in action and it is pretty awesome!
Next up. Snipers are the new buggy-whip makers.
Why can't soldiers carry microphones so they can pick up the sound when a sniper fires, and based on the time and intensity each soldier picks up the sound, the location can be sent to them. Instead of having the computer to process it with them, just process it at base and send the data back, it'd probably be just as fast and cheaper to implement.
... when I say "That's pretty fuckin neat".
IT IS QUIET HERE. . . . TOO QUIET.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Wouldn't a silencer on the sniper rifle defeat this system?
I saw something like this on TV a few years ago. There were some security contractors in Iraq who had a similar device that determined range and vector to gunshots. I don't remember it having the laser designator, but other than that, it was pretty much the exact same thing.
Who the hell snipes at night?
The system can recognize weapons by their report, and thus ignore friendly fire.
So if any of our weapons fall into enemy hands, this robot will actually hinder handicap the user since they would be ignoring shots from the other side thinking that it's just FF?
the machine utilizes robotic hearing technology originally developed by Boston University's Photonics Center to improve hearing aids to sense a shot fired and pinpoint its source
Ladies and gentlemen, the 6 million dollar grandma.
Still, there is the time necessary to get to the hostile. So it would make the hostile have to move after having discharged -an inconvenience. In addition, a hostile could set-up decoys (others to shoot semi-randomly), disguise the sound, etc. Or maybe this puppy has filters which are able to discard the decoys and added sounds from the one of interest.
Nah - kevlar wouldn't stop a sniper round. If we're talking about Baghdad, and the snipers are enemy forces firing AK47s, then the 7.62 round they fire would go through the Kevlar as if it wasn't there.
;)
Body armor doesn't stop sniper rounds. Kinda like how your comment didn't stop my comment from shooting it out of the air.
Everything sounded pretty normal until the XBox controller...that was pretty funny.
This used to be called 'Nintendo Warfare'. I'd almost say we'll change the term to 'XBox Warfare' but it won't be long before somebody mods a Wii controller to do all of this AND make the kill shot to.
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
Too bad it's not controlled by a Wii controller. Then you could just kill the sniper with the controller and avoid the air strike altogether.
- .50 cal rifle in addition to sensors so it can shoot back. Callin' in for air strike is a bit of delay dont ya think? ;)
Skynet is closer than many people think
I don't think the technology in this thing justifies the price tag. It sounds like the brunt of the work is done by four microphones and an algorithm to compare the data from the mics. Why not just have different soldiers carry mics on their persons and relay the data to a laptop? you can spend the 149900 dollars you saved on other things. If the mics are seperated (ie carried by different soldiers, or maybe just thrown) you will probably get more usable data too. I must be missing something.
Also, I don't know why the designer suggested it be used to enter dangerous areas. Maybe he wants to sell more of them, I guess, but it seems to me you don't want to send a 150k piece of equipment into dangerous territory. Here's a better idea -have a webcam attached to a wireless transmitter and huck it into the building. Yay -you now have eyes on the inside of the building for less than 50 bucks.
...if I were the kind of person that has to worry about sinpers, I'd rather know where they are before they take that headshot.
I guess that's on the feature list for 2.0?
differentiating the make and model of a rifle fired a mile away simply by analyzing the sound of the distant blast. Sorry, bzzzt, no. There is NO way to distinguish one, let's say, 22 Long Rifle muzzle blast signature from another, reliably. You can't pretend to tell me that muzzle crowning of one model vs the other can be that specific. Location, yeah, OK, maybe, triangulation and all that. Sound signature based on make and model? Bullshiat. There's about 4 different muzzle crown profiles used, and the sound signature is going to vary a hell of a lot more by brand and type of ammo, than shape and "make and model" of the firearm.
...he'll be able to call in precision chair strikes!
If there is active fighting going on, the sniper will wait till he hears a shell incoming and fire at the same time as the explosion, hows El Lugbot going to distinguish the shot in the sound of the explosion?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
So, an idea for an anti-sniper measure occured to me a couple of weeks ago. Once you've identified the location from which the shot was fired, you shine a laser at it at an intensity such that if you're looking at it with the naked eye, you're extremely uncomfortable, but if you're looking through a scope, you lose an eye. I wonder what would happen to casualty rates for US soldiers in Iraq if sniping was a two-shot career.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
When will this be used against the Citizens of the US?
Note to self - shoot the robot first!
There are systems in place, albeit mainly fixed location (for the most part) that perform this task. Shotspotter is one that comes to mind, along with FireFinder for larger caliber weapons.
What caught my eye was that it was BU doing this research and development. I lived in Boston for a long time (Cape Cod resident now) and still read the Boston Globe. Just about two weeks ago there was an article (beware, Undertone pop-unders) about the Boston city government looking into deploying Shotspotter in Roxbury and Dorchester, neighborhoods that have seen an uptick in gun violence in the last couple of years (after about a decade of falling rates of shootings).
Now, despite the OP's write-up, I don't anticipate F-16s with LGBs loitering over Grove Hall, waiting to drop a 500 lb. smart bomb on a triple-decker on Blue Hill Ave. Nor do I think that this will happen in Sadr City, Baghdad. Iraqi insurgents would quickly adapt to this tactic and hold human shields.
Bottom line, speaking domestically, the police depend on citizens to call in with a report of "shots fired". Anything that takes the voluntary calls out of the loop can only decrease response time, and it's the sort of surveillance that's targeted to the transient sound of a gunshot, not a camera on a lamppost taking indiscriminent pictures of anyone who happens to be on a particular corner.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
A common sniper tactic is to position yourself in a location where hills and other terrain will reflect sound back to the target, confusing the target as to the actual location of your fires. Couldn't sound reflection be brought into play and give the device the wrong location, or a set of wrong locations?
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
The technology to achieve this has been there for a long time. It is just that now military spending is growing again.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's amazing how easily one can get around complex machinery with the use of a pocket knife, some lint and chewing gum if one has the knowhow...
Well, they really should have used that on, let me count:
- Bourne Supremacy
- Phone Booth
- Most any other movie
Speaking from someone that was infantry over in Iraq. This would be very helpful , not for just snipers but anyone that might be shooting at you. Just for clarification , sorry most likely if it is sniper fire you are not going to call in an air strike. You mortar team would take care of it. They can usually set up in less than minute . If they are really close , the mortar team can hit them back within seconds. Speaking from experience , (was an RTO) , it takes time for an air strike, by that time the sniper or who ever has ran away. Most of them wouldn't ever stick around, they would take there pop shot and run like hell. If they stayed they knew mostly likely they would get their asses handed to them.
"Let's say I want to squirt the robot a picture of my kids, the robot can squirt me back a precision tactical airstrike. That's a software experience." - The Ballms
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
This is all well and fine, until the next upgraded model starts searching for Sarah Conner. Then we're all in for it.
The troops have body armor. The troops have more body armor than most of them really want to wear--plates designed to stop armor piercing 7.62 rounds inside kevlar vests with supplemental side plates and extra shrapnel protection. Interesting red herring, but not a factor.
I find it hard to believe that the thing would really work as well as they claim in a peaceful urban noise environment, let alone a hostile one. Echoes, explosions, and just sheer volume of noise... Still, for an isolated shot in an otherwise peaceful scene, maybe it would be useful.
Even with a fairly tight grid coordinate, however, ground troops are still going to be restricted by rules of engagement and the all-important positive ID of the enemy. This is bar none the greatest difficulty in finding the bad guys and making them dead guys--you have to be absolutely certain of your target, and the bad guys know how to make it difficult. The dumb ones were already made into dead ones a while ago.
Set up some remote rifles and set them to fire at approximately the same time you fire. This will give the device numerous targets to engage and give you time to flee the area before artillery comes in. Old rifles probably go for around $20 US in Iraq about now, so figure 5 false positives cost around $100 dollars, plus materials cost to rig up the remote shot operation...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
...the machine utilizes robotic hearing technology...to sense a shot fired and pinpoint its source.
The problem is that it's simple to pinpoint a source out in the open, but it's much more difficult to determine the source in an urban environment with all of the occlusions and echoes caused by buildings, vehicles, etc. I'm sure this thing works great in the lab, but I doubt it would fare as well in real urban combat.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Quote from the parent comment: "This robot is exactly the wrong approach to be taking in a counterinsurgency."
For President and General Dwight Eisenhower was right. The Military-Industrial Complex has a life of its own that ignores the well-being of the people. The U.S. government spends any amount of money for killing, and very little money on making relationships. It was reported that, of the more than 1,000 Americans in diplomatic service in Iraq, exactly 6 speak Arabic.
Here's my summary of Bush administration corruption: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy. I hope other people will write their own and send them to their government leaders.
Quick tip from the summary: One of the main purposes of invading Iraq was to reduce the supply of oil and make the price go up. Before the invasion, Iraq was selling 3.5 million barrels a day. Now the country sells 2 million. The Bush family and Cheney have investments in oil and weapons, and they act to make the value of their investments increase.
iRobot? These guys are likely to get sued by both Will Smith _and_ Apple.
President ISES
(International Society for Elimination of Sigs)
"controlled via a modified Xbox videogame controller"
I'm guessing this is so that the next generation of enlisted men will already feel familiar with the controls.
If so, smart move.
If not, then I wonder why they cheaped out on the remote?
No Disassemble!
I'm sorry but I usually love pop sci references. This one is horrible, theres is nothing of merit in it, I can see the tech through "pop" sources, but I always thought of this mag as different. I feel so let down :(
I'd snipe some guy from 2 miles away and then they all turn and lay down fire on my exact location. Fuck that.
Technology solves most problems.
Other issues are a bit more messy.
I would much rather have Quad-damage and Rocket Jump.
i bet microsoft will sue cos they are selling modifyed xbox hardware and that breaks the aggreement, nless they have a dead with microsoft to use their controllers
So... are they using the Bear, Girly or WiFi w/ Crappy D-Pad controller?
I wonder how much time and effort they put into the 'rifle-recognition' feature when the whole schee can be foiled in a million different ways.
First of all, it would have to have a prerecorded sound sample of every combat rifle in every configuration with evey type of every caliber with every type charge and every bullet type resulting in thousands of possibilities. Second, it would have to be able to compensate for sound changes caused by terrain features, changes in elevation, thermal gradients (possibly multiple gradients), distance, humidity, direction of fire, wind, and backgroud/ambient noise, animal life, vegetation. The mechanical variables would be bullet caliber, bullet type, bullet weight, charge size, charge type, primer type, fouled ammunition, barrel length, type of action (Bolt-action, pump-action, semi-automatic, full-automatic, rimfire, centerfire, shotgun, muzzle brake, gas-operated, recoil-operated), muzzle brake, grenade launcher (SKS-types). All of these variables can produce differently sounding muzzle 'blasts' that can disguise or alter, intentionally or not, the sound of the gunshot. What's more is that parts can be changed, such as longer or shorter barells on some rifles.
What use is sound recognition technology if it can only identify a gunshot cross an open field.
The problem is that since it *may* be able to recognize gunshots, there are way too many variables that current computing can account for.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
My first thought on reading this was, "Holy fuck!" Thinking about the new level of totalitarianism such a device would enable. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to feel certain that as long as they're using a technology called iRobot in their design, it won't go anywhere, because they'll be embroiled in lawsuits with Apple until long after my bones have turned to dust.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Quick tip from the summary: One of the main purposes of invading Iraq was to reduce the supply of oil and make the price go up. Before the invasion, Iraq was selling 3.5 million barrels a day. Now the country sells 2 million. The Bush family and Cheney have investments in oil and weapons, and they act to make the value of their investments increase.
Wouldn't it be better to have invested in corn and really push ethanol. How about investing in batteries and push hybrids. Maybe buy soybean futures and mandate that all truckers use bio-diesel. These seem a lot less likely to piss anyone off and would actually make more money than what you proposed. You can make much bigger killing on future markets like corn or soybean (without actually killing anyone) than you can on the Bush and Cheney investments you mention. (Their investments are in blind trusts, btw. No one, including themselves have any idea as to what they are invested in.) Besides, oil slid below $50 today. If their goal was to raise the price of oil, don't you think they could have been more successful? Don't you think they would have bombed the shit out of the Iraqi oil fields instead of securing them?
No, starting a war for profit in the way you describe doesn't make much sense. Maybe you should step away from the bong, remove your tinfoil hat and rethink this. I'm sure you can come up with a better conspiracy theory than that joke you just proposed. Come on! I want something good. I love a good conspiracy!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I wonder if they'll make another version where a sniper rifle is attached with an digital scope so that the robot could spin around, aim and the robot operator could view the LCD remotely and determine whether to do the shot or not. If he chooses to shoot, the whole process from time of the shot by the enemy sniper to the return shot by the robot could take less than a couple of seconds.
Is it bulletproof?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
They 1 - hide, very very good, so even if you lasertag the area, you'll have difficulty finding him and 2 - a smart sniper doesn't stay in the same location popping 10-ths of bullets in people's brains. Snipers are supposed to be single-shot accurate and have a mission to kill a certain person, whether that be a commander, a guard or whatever it may be, if you want more people dead, you deploy a force with a little bigger firepower. The problem (these days in the military too) is that people have been watching too much high-suspense movies and they're using resources like snipers the same way as well as making 'solutions' to counter Hollywood-style military personnel. I've got family that is in Iraq (he's actually got sniper training) and he can tell you all about the use of 100's of military personnel to guard a small area while other areas are under-stabilized and the misuse of their skills to reflect more 'American' style high-suspense combat fighting against guerilla and other 'insurgents' that can transform from civilians walking around on the marketplace to fighter-with-automatic-rifle in a few seconds.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Anyone else find it funny that from all the "sci-fi" films of the 20th century, the lighthearted comedy Short Circuit had the most realistic combat robots?
A)bort, R)etry or S)elf-destruct?
...since a sniper can operate at further than 3000feet.
http://world.guns.ru/sniper/sn02-e.htm
From all the Discovery and TLC I've been watching, it seems to be between 1500 and 2000 YARDS.
So first thing the sniper does is shoot the robot a couple times.
What does your post have to do with what you replied to, namely: "Real evidence that video game AI snipers are cheaters!"?
7.62mm rifle round is very vague. There are several 7.62mm (.30 cal) rifle rounds and all will penetrate current vests without steel or ceramic plates.
7.62x39mm - SKS and AK47 style rifles
7.62x51mm, 7.x62 NATO - FAL, M14, M60, M40 (.308 Winchester is a higher pressure cartridge and may not be safe to use in 7.62NATO chambers)
7.62x63mm, 30-06 - M1903, M1917, M1 Garand
7.62x54R mm - Mosin-Nagant 91/30, M38, M44, Dragunov (longest serving military cartridge in the world)
Here are some Steve Ballmer quotes for you:
"I like to tell people that all of our products and business will go through three phases. There's vision, patience, and execution."
"Bill brings to the company the idea that conflict can be a good thing..."
"We [Microsoft] don't have a monopoly. We have precision (ch)air strikes. There's a difference."
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
Wouldn't the originating sound reach all points before any of the echos?
What's stopping the sniper from using a silencer, or Steven Seagal'ing it by taping a 2 liter soda bottle onto the end of his gun? :P
I can't be the only person who finds the terms 'precision' and 'surgical' sickeningly hilarious when applied to airstrikes in urban areas.
Also the likely sequence of events is probably something like:
1) Insurgent sniper climbs onto roof of house
2) Insurgent sniper shoots US soldier
3) Insurgent sniper legs it double quick
4) Unsuspecting householder still wondering what that noise on the roof is but afraid to go look has 2000lb bomb dropped on their house, killing them and most of their neighbours.
The point of this robot is precision, but if that doesn't work I'm confident they'll just paste the area with bombs instead.
After all, that's what the euphemism 'collateral damage' was invented for, a fancy name for not caring what else you hit in order to (try to) take out a target. Another euphemism is 'friendly fire' (aka 'blue on blue') which basically means that some trigger happy idiot kills their own.
Just another machine for Skynet to employ in its war against humanity - oh has Hollywood taught the millitary nothing!!!!
(and yes I know I am mixing machine-driven doomsday titles...)
Nothing witty
If you have line of sight with the sniper, you will have the direct signal and its echos, the direct signal will always arrive earlier than the echos. So you can ignore the echos.
As the sniper is trying to kill you, the sniper probably already has line of sight with you.
Faggotistan? Is that you?
One could take this back in time and confirm or deny whether Lee Harvey Oswald did it, or whether there was another shooter on/ behind the "grassy knoll" :-)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Quotes from the parent comment: "Wouldn't it be better to have invested in corn and really push ethanol. " and "No, starting a war for profit in the way you describe doesn't make much sense."
Most people who try to analyze U.S. government corruption have the simplistic ideas of the normal, moral way of being. That's one reason why the corruption works, because the citizens can be confused.
The fact is, although the price of oil is down, because the OPEC cartel has not been successful recently at getting its member states to limit production, the price of gasoline is still up. The scheme to make oil prices higher has made hundreds of billions of dollars for the oil companies, and is still making billions.
What is your theory? Why did Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush start a war that anyone with the slightest understanding of the area knew could not be won? This was the lie, and U.S. citizens accepted it: "U.S. government violence in Iraq will create a stable democracy in a region that has always known continual violence, since more than 2,000 years ago." Of course, most U.S. citizens cannot find Iraq on a map, even now.
In actuality, violence breeds violence, exactly as the world has seen in Iraq.
Another issue: Most people don't understand why ethanol cannot replace oil. The fact is, the energy needs of the world are too great for the amount of farm land.
Do you think Cheney and Bush follow the rules? Is Halliburton honest? For some companies, violence is extremely profitable. For the average U.S. citizen, it has been devastating, making each one of them a little poorer.
Kevlar just makes the sniper take a wee bit more time aiming (hey, he's got all the time in the world) to hit the part of you which not covered by Kevlar, or alternatively just kill a child in your vicinity and watch the fun start. OMNIPRESENT DEATH ROBOTS, on the other hand, make poorly educated irregulars consider better career options. At the very least the exaggerated fear of the OMNIPRESENT DEATH ROBOT will make them reposition after every shot, and the more of their time they spend crawling from hidey-hole to hidey-hole the less time they're shooting friendlies. (Doesn't do much for their ability to deny us access to an area but, hey, you can't have everything.)
Speaking of OMNIPRESENT DEATH ROBOTS: in the first Gulf War the Navy did some field trials with UAVs (a pretty new thing at the time, as I recall). The UAV would overfly a coastal battery, and then the battleships would obliterate it. It eventually got to the point that if the Iraqi Army saw a UAV overfly their position they would break and run. Just as effective tactically (thats one battery that won't be hitting a boat full of Marines), but less dead Iraqi conscripts who we've got no particular reason to kill when they don't present a direct threat to our forces. I think I can get behind that. Similarly, us having the reputation (bah, who needs actual facts, just the reputation) of instantaneously snuffing out enemy snipers will make some of those unemployed guys who hear the "Hey, fight for Allah and we'll pay you $50!" say "No thanks! I'd be happy to fight for Allah but I don't want to be meeting him just yet!"
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Acoustic 'fingerprints' can be used to accurately identify a number of things that even the pros (who just haven't given the concept some thought) don't readily recognize. This was also was thought about accoustic signatures of ships and submarines. Yet we've been able to identify various targets down the the hull number.
I'm completely untrained in the accoustic signature of fire arms yet I can tell the difference between a hand gun, shot gun and rifle shot. I don't think it's at all beyond the abilities to identify various gun characteristics accousticly.
I dont understand how it can identify the rifle by the sound, I would have thought that the ammunition used would be more likely to influence the sound than the rifle used ? And what if the sniper is using the same rifle/ammunition as the troops he's firing on ? He's then identified as friendly ?
No, really !
but what if i shoot the robot?
Do not trust this signature.
Mr Blair, when we discuss giving the troops adequate equipment to do their jobs, this is what we're talking about. One flak jacket between three really isn't good enough nowadays.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
You're missing out on the key point that is alluded to in the summary.
They've finally developed a flightless robot.
Flightless! It does not fly, AT ALL. Mankind has been dreaming of this since the dawn of science fiction... robots that don't go flying all over the place. awesome.
You are about to be shot by a man named ... oh, too late!
Aren't most robots flightless? Sure, Tom Servo has a hover-skirt, but that's not really flight.
More seriously, I knew that iRobot was the company that manufactured my Roomba, but it looks like they're doing some other pretty cool stuff.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Actually, echo shouldn't be too much of a problem because it always arrives *after* the initial sound -- as long as you've got line of sight, which I'm guessing would be the main limitation. I suspect another source of error would be the refraction caused by temperature gradients, but I'm not sure how much effect that has. Otherwise, I also share your impression that this is probably a great lab gadget...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
See this article for details. They have sensors on buildings which pinpoint the location of any shots fired & alert dispatchers. The police have to respond slightly differently to these - they're used to getting there after the perp has fled, with this system they can get there so fast that it's likely that the shooter is still there.
The sniper will have a line of sight (and arc of travel given longer ranges) to the target. That is needed to make the shot. But in an urban setting, unless the robot is the target, it may not have a clear LOS to paint the shooter's location.
So to counter this new tech, the sniper would need to:
A) Obtain American or 'friendly' weapons and ammo.
B) Get location information from insurgent infiltrators working as laborers as to where the owls are and figure out their LOS.
C) Obtain a rifle capable of accurate fire at ranges beyond 1000 yards.
So would this fall under "Counter-Insurgency Theater"?
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I worked on a sniper location project for two years, and there are a lot of problems with a sound based system. The first has been mentioned already: echo. Now, this isn't a big problem to take care of, but it requires sacrifices. Either cutting off the sound sensor after the first detection of a gunshot for a few seconds to ignore the echo, or detecting the echo as more bullets, giving false readings. Cutting off the sound sensor after the first reading means if there are two shots fired at the same time(another problem for it to detect in the first place), it can't detect the second shooter. As well, because it uses a laser range-finder to track the position of the shooter, it can only track one at a time, making it mostly useless in for more than one combatant. The laser range finder also poses a problem, because unless the sniper is shooting AT the robot, it could give out a false position, say another building that was in the way. Now, if this was meant to only track snipers, its useless. Modern snipers use suppressors, which used to be called silencers. These are almost impossible to detect with a sound based device, especially ones that only track the initial blast, and not the bullet in fight. The snipers also hide in very small places, making the range finder even more useless, as there will be many objects between the robot and the sniper. If this was meant to help soldiers by telling them the positions of the enemy in combat, its also useless, since it can only track one person at a time, and again, the laser range finder is a terrible way to find the range to a shooter. This is also not new. Its nice that it has such good range, but there are systems for $10k out there that do a better, and more consistent job of this. There is also a system in the works which is based on tracking the bullets mid-flight, which can triangulate the position of the shooter without need of a muzzle-blast, and will solve the problem of multiple shooters. I really don't see why the military would buy this.
I count myself amongst the liberals under most "normal" circumstances. Yet it never ceases to amaze me how the left-wing loonies (am I assuming they're left-wing? Yes, yes I am) come out of the woodwork any time there's a mention of a new device that performs ANY sort of military function whatsoever. Amazing how a device, designed to locate and identify an enemy sniper WHO IS ALREADY SHOOTING AT YOU, is a Bad Thing(tm).
;-P
Mod me a troll. I've got karma to burn, baby. (Ooohh! I said "burn baby!" I must be a right-wing warmonger!)
It's more like it's not a big deal because echoes can be detected these days... I didn't understand any of the abstracts I found on the subject so I decided not to C&P them :D My biggest objection to this device is, if it follows the picture, it's an absolutely retarded design. You want to minimize the amount of electronics in the "head", both for the issue of how easy it is to shoot the robot, and keeping the center of gravity low... Unless it has some kind of headstand trick for stair climbing and it needs the mass or something :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Isn't there a fundamental problem with this? If the sniper is shooting in the dark then he must have night vision too, so he'll see the "visible only to night vision" laser, shoot the robot, move, then pick off the rest of the troops.
...the first shot is to the robot?
Is lighting up a target with NV-visible lazers REALLY the way to go? Assuming the sniper and/or his allies use NV as well, they'll realize he's been lit up by 35 different robots, and start reporting their positions to each other, potentially revealing American positions as well!
"My tech is cooler than yours!" the Americans say, pfff, "I have more common-sense." says the rest of the world. Honestly though, yeesh!
how is babby formed?
Actually this system is superior for just that reason, it works well in an urban environment. You wouldn't be able to get that from reading the Popular Science article, but check out the website for BMS (http://www.biomimetic-systems.com/, check under technology). It has to do with the fact that it uses a biomedical approach unlike conventional devices of this type. Those devices, like you said work well in a laboratory environment but fail miserably once you remove them their happy place!
Is that their targets rarely shoot back.
I'd also have to wonder whether the droid gets it first or not.
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The SR-25 used by the Navy, also known as the Mk 11 Mod 0 Sniper Weapon System utilizes a suppressor/silencer
as long as you've got line of sight, which I'm guessing would be the main limitation
How is that a limitation? If the sniper is shooting at you, he's got line of sight to you and hence you've got line of sight to him (or at least, where he is when he pops up). Very few snipers take the ballistic approach to sniping...
Did anyone else read the headline thinking it said "Robot Senses Spiders"? Like some innovative robot developer had come up with something for rich arachnophobes?
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"identify it as a hostile or friendly weapon"
After installing this system, sales of US military rifles jump in Iraq.
"Sarge, it says here that it was someone with an M40."
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The problem is, if the sniper has a line of sight with *you*, he may not necessarily have line of sight with the robot.
I guess you will need to keep close to the robot, maybe wear it like a hat.
Sorting out the direction with multiple echoes is not that difficult. The real sound is always first; the path the echo takes is always longer, so the sound is delayed. Thus echoes won't fool an electronic sensor and don't usually fool trained personnel.
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...and very few snipers are interested at shooting robots. Unless the robot is following you closely, it's likely *it* wouldn't have line of sight. Also, if the sniper is fast enough/far enough, he might even be able to get out of the way (e.g. window) before the sound reaches the robot. I guess they'd still know the building...
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