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."

Comments

Re:why?

[MindStalker]

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.

I hope they don't rely on this too much...

[clragon]

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?

Re:Kevlar a better investment?

[Chandon Seldon]

This kneejerk reaction: "Bah! New stuff is worse than old reliable stuff" isn't appropriate for concept prototypes.

I absolutely agree that only proven technology should be rolled out en-mass, but developments like this robot are extremely valuable. Even if it utterly doesn't work, that's fine - they'll still learn a bunch about automatic auditory sensors, single sensor location calculation, and building robots.

As for the tactical utility of this sort of thing - it absolutely can't be replicated by armored vests. Kevlar does *nothing* against a high powered rifle. Even if every soldier always wore the armor necessary to stop a 7.62 mm rifle round cold, it would be heavy and hot, and they'd just get sniped in the face and upper leg more often. The thing that's really annoying about a sniper isn't that they can injure someone; it's that if you run into a sniper moving through an urban setting you're stopped dead until you can figure out where they are - this can really slow down any kind of urban troop movement. With this robot (conceptually), it reduces the sniper to only one shot - then since you know where they are you can take them out and keep going.

Re:Real evidence...

[flyingsquid]

This robot is exactly the wrong approach to be taking in a counterinsurgency. Great, you've figured out where the sniper is holed up, and dropped a 500 lb. bomb on his head. Your $150,000 robot and your $20,000 guided bomb have now taken out exactly one (1) Iraqi insurgent. In the process, you've managed to piss off all the residents of the building by dropping high explosives on their homes, and pissed off all their friends and relatives, and convinced those people that you don't really give a shit about the people of the country you've occupied (assuming they were on the fence before). And now four or five more guys join the insurgency to take his place, and all those other people you pissed off are that much more likely to support the insurgents instead of you. Seriously, think about it: imagine you were living in a small apartment building and a sniper hides on top of it. You didn't ask for him to be there, you don't want him there, maybe you'd even turn him in if you weren't afraid of the guerillas, but suddenly 500 lbs. of explosive land on the roof. Are you suddenly going to be won over by the military?

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.

Re:Real evidence...

[Eskarel]

If you would RTFA, or for that matter RTFSummary, you'd notice that they aren't painting for air strikes(though that is an option), they're painting the target for soldiers with night vision goggles. You don't drop a 500 lb bomb on the sniper(unless you have to), you light him up like a Christmas tree and shoot him in the head with a 50 cent bullet.

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.

Re:Real evidence...

[Babbster]

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.

Re:Real evidence...

[msouth]

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!

What about sound reflections?

[nexuspal]

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?

Echo! Echo? Echo.

[StikyPad]

...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.

Re:Echo! Echo? Echo.

[jmv]

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...