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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 $150,000, the machine utilizes robotic hearing technology originally developed by Boston University's Photonics Center to improve hearing aids to sense a shot fired and pinpoint its source, identify it as a hostile or friendly weapon, and illuminate the target with a laser visible only with night vision. The RedOwl, built on an iRobot packbot platform and controlled via a modified Xbox videogame controller, can figure out the location of a target 3,000 feet away, allowing troops to call in a precision air strike."
I would guess you can buy something like 150 good protective body armors for the price of this thing.
If I was a soldier sent to an area with snipers I think I would prefer first to have plenty of Kevlar, this thing would then come second.
I think it is some time ago, but I seem to recall some kind of news about the soldiers not having enough body armor in Iraq, if this really is true, I think this should be put first on the budget instead of buying this kind of fancy equipment that might be helpful to the soldiers in hunting down snipers, but also maybe would slow their progress down. In a fast retreat (even just a short one) you would probable have to leave these 150K$ slowly moving along slowly on it's own in enemy territory.
The article doesn't say much about the weight of this thing though.
Its not uncommon really. Sometimes a sniper has a very good protective spot and you can't get to the spot itself without fighting through other enemies.
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?
In a coventional war, you strike at your enemy's troops, at his supply train, at his ability to make war. But in a counterinsurgency, the goal is entirely different- you have to win over the people the insurgency is based within. And the more people you kill, the more bombs you drop in populated areas, the further you are from that goal. Your strategy should not be to kill the sniper- your strategy should be to convince him that he's got more to gain from being a part of the system than fighting it, and to lay down his arms, and go back to work. Failing that, you need to convince the people he operates among that he's not working in their best interests, so they won't support him. But as long as we're operating within the "kill the bad guys" mentality, we will continue to fail in Iraq.
The new guy in charge, General Petraeus, does seem to get this stuff. He did a PhD on Viet Nam. But it may be a case of too little, too late.
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.
Whether you're going to find snipers not using night vision goggles in light situations that allow for the use of night vision goggles I don't know, but I think the camera is supposed to provide you with an image in daylight.
The whole point of this device is not having to drop a 500 lb bomb to clear out snipers, and of course to stop people from getting shot when they're trying to find the sniper.
You seem to be confusing "strategy" with "tactics" - this is a tactical device. The bottom line is that if you have a sniper firing at your troops you have two options: Find the sniper and take him or her out, or leave the area (well, three, if you count just going on by in an armored vehicle). You're right that you wouldn't want to take out a sniper with a bomb if the sniper is in a densely populated area, but you can still use the described device to locate the sniper for either evasion or evasion plus attack (going into the apartment building in your scenario or using a friendly sniper to take out the enemy).
Once the sniper is shooting, it's a bit too late to prevent him from doing so by making him your friend.
It's a great thing to be able to know where the threat is, first off. It's a huge improvement over knowing nothing.
Second, the stuff I've read from milblogs and the like leads me to believe that there are rules about what they will hit. This doesn't change that. It's not like the robot has a missile launcher on it's back that it can autonomously respond with. This makes it easier to have a measured response because you know exactly where the threat is.
If you were really concerned about decreasing collateral damage, I think you would consider this a huge benefit. But hey, don't let me stop you from thinking with your political platform!
Liberty uber alles.
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
For the civilian in Iraq, it's safe to assume that someone wants your head.
Uniforms mean nothing. The sniper is everyone's enemy and there is no real downside to taking him out.
wow...you really are fed on a steady diet of CNN pictures and their associated blurbs aren't you? perhaps you should get out in the real world a little bit. also, it's a sniper detecting robot. it's quite unlikely that it would be deployed in the midst of "arabs who shoot guns in the air to celebrate". and i'm assuming that the soldiers who use the bot have enough sense to differentiate a crowd of happy people with guns from a sniper on a roof somewhere. what's that you say? it was a joke? hmm.....
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
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.
...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
So what if then a sniper in a suberban area were, say, sat way back in a room, shooting out of a window?
The acoustics would alter the sound significantly would they not? More so then if he were sat right in a window.
I'm sure there would be ways to mess with such a device.
If I were a sniper, my first shot...
... would be the robot.
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
You are assuming that most snipers likely to be encountered are professionally trained.
What's a pissed off farmer shooting at passing soldiers while hiding in his barn?
Or say an Iraqi kid, hiding in a bombed out apartment flat, shooting at soldiers with a an abandoned AK
Or a conscript cowering in fear amongst rubble taking pot shots with the rifle that was thrust into his hands.
Hell, even a regular grunt who moves into a flanking position to try to pick off a few oppenonts while relatively concealed is a sniper.
I strongly suspect you're going to see far more of the above examples on the today's battlefield that the modern day ninja types glamourized by Hollywood and Discovery Channel.