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."
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?
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.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
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
...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.
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