Slashdot Mirror
Grenade-Style Wireless Camera For Combat
nk497 writes "A new wireless camera called the I-Ball is being developed to be shot into locations using a grenade launcher so troops can see what lies ahead. The I-Ball sends real-time, 360-degree video back to soldiers while it's flying through the air and when it lands."
Why not just shoot the grenades in there. Then you'll know what lies ahead (bodies).
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
I watched a show about these on "future weapons" last year. they have been in production for over 3 years now.
Load up the camera round, fire, your buddy get's to look at the screen as it floats down to earth.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
From TFA:
âoeWe have overcome some significant technological challenges in developing the I-Ball technology,â said Paul Thompson of Dreampact. âoeAlthough it is in its early stages, we are very excited about the technology's potential to help our troops to be better prepared for battle.â
In other words, "We had an idea, and we've got no idea how to actually implement it, but if the MoD gives us a bunch of money we'll happily spend it."
Maybe the UK MoD is better than the US DoD about not funding projects just because some legislator is owed a favor, but I wouldn't bet on it.
It would be interesting to see what this thing looks like. It must be pretty rugged in order to survive the landing.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
If the "bad guys" didn't already hear you coming in, they really know when that ball comes flying in the room! Seriously, it's going to take a minute to analyze the feed and on the ground we don't have that time luxury. While there might be a few isolated cases where it could be useful, I'm not sure what they are.
Hope they have a fast camera, or the picture will be quite blurry...
I sure hope these things are less than $100... hell, less than $10 for that matter. I sure as hell don't think we need to waste that kind of money on stuff the enemy might take home as a souvenir.
"Why can't we all just get along?!" I'd rather see research and development dollars spent making war and conflict obsolete.
At the moment, most of the conflict where it is "the world" vs. the U.S.A., seems to be stemming from ridiculous policies that no one can fully explain. Why do we care about the "spread of communism"? Why do we care about "defending Israel"? There are a lot of humanitarian causes far more dire and we leave those tragedies alone with a clear conscience. Can someone tell me why we spend SO much money and so many human lives on "expanding democracy" and "defending Israel"?
What, nobody uses Google Earth anymore?
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
yah and if happens to be civilians we just play the "collateral damage" euphemism
Wow, another post completely devoid of substance or news.
360 degree FOV? Nice, but on what plane? How does it orient itself? Like a weebl? Can it see straight up or only on a horizontal plane?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FRmJzK9eaZA&feature=related
Does it run Linux?
If I was developing a hardened, spherical wireless camera, I'd have many more uses for it than killing people. The entertainment possibilities alone are immense. Hopefully we'll see this deployed on the field of play before the battlefield.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Comment removed based on user account deletion
one-eyed san francisco artist looking for the tech that will allow her to put a webcam in her eye socket:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2008/11/15/2008-11-15_san_francisco_artist_looks_to_replace_lo.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's nice, but I'll wait till they come with lasers.
In fact I'm totally against war. But if war has to be, this tool can be cool. You can put a remote grenade inside of this little gadget, and if there is people where it lands, you detonate it. So it's maybe a little expensive grenade, but can be pretty usefull in some situation. The cool part is that you can reuse it in case it lands where nobody was. But hey, I'm against war.
Some old North Korean told me that in Soviet Russia, cameras grenade-launch YOU.
Mod "2005 called they want their memes back."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
::snickers immaturely::
I, for one, welcome our new I-less overlords!
The US government already has flying drones with millimeter radar capable of seeing inside a hardened bunker -- as in, it can see bodies and outlines some several feet through concrete and steel. Why not just use those? If you're close enough to throw a grenade toward the target, they're likely close enough to blow you away too, and if I'm taking a bullet in the butt risk, wouldn't it make sense to throw something that could kill them before they kill me?
"Holy Allah, they're throwing webcams at us! We must flee!"
Puh-leze.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
...sensitive equipment on site, element of surprise, recon mission...
The list is long.
Are you one of those guys that, when playing Counterstrike, chucks grenades inside killing all the hostages and then runs into the room spraying it with bullets, only to be knifed in the head once you run out of ammo?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Have they finally developed real-life Zeroids?
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
paparazzi with weapons.
I see televised golf tournaments becoming much more interesting.
Have gnu, will travel.
Mmmm, fresh asshole!
Now hold still while I get fire up the grill and sharpen my steak knife.....
I want a bunch of disposable ones, that I can shoot ahead from my car, when approaching a hill or a curve on the road. Instead of live video, though, it would alert me of a speed-trap ahead... If they could make these to cost, say, $5 a pop, the cost of a road-trip from Boston to New York can really come down in cost...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is straight out of chapter one of Christopher Brookmyre's All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an eye. http://www.amazon.com/All-Games-Until-Somebody-Loses/dp/0316725234
In his book "All fun and games until somebody loses an eye" he has exactly this piece and its embedded in a gel to make it stick to surfaces.
Top author, but I doubt he is getting royalties for this.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
There was some cop show recently where a swat team used a similar device, except it also had RC controlled weight inside so that they could roll it via remote. Forgot which show, but I doubt its not based on a real device.
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
porn
don't underestimate the buying power of the underserved eye socket fetishist community
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It really bothers me to hear an adult use the term "bad guy" to refer to a real person. It seems to be a recent American trend. Bad guys are characters found in silly action films and fairy tales.
Obligatory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Fun_Ball
This idea isn't new. It has been tried before, but didn't work as expected.
...reminds me of the main character from Doomsday. Her removable eyeball-camera gets tossed ahead or around corners, and using her wristwatch, she focuses, zooms and targets threats. (it also records video!)
A life-saving tool, like an ambulance? To the extent that this will be a life-saving tool for some soldiers, it will be a life-ending tool for other soldiers.
No, it's just cover for their portal to evil domains.
Obligatory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Fun_Ball
by tall grass.
a one eyed porn actress applied for the job to have a webcam inserted in her eye socket
the porn producer took her application, recognized her, and told her they go to the same restaurant. he said that if any positions became available, he would tell her at the restaurant
the porn actress replied "ok, i'll keep an eye out for you"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Thief 2 - The Metal Age, I think.
How is a human supposed to get anything meaningful out of a speeding camera ? The only way I could see this being useful is if the software is able to stitch the images into a big huge panoramic image of the room, or use radar/lidar to assemble a 3D view. Then you have to process that info quickly enough (in your brain) to make a tactical decision before the enemy follows the trajectory back to your location.
Cool technology yes, but it doesn't seem very useful in practice.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
could be an interesting way to paint targets of interest and then fire/forget
I seem to recall a Doonesbury cartoon back during GW I where he had shots from the nose camera of a cruise missile as it wended its way through the offices and cubicles at a power plant.
If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.
I just want to point out that it says these would be fired from a grenade launcher, most likely meaning a standard underbarrel 40mm grenade launcher attached to an M16. This means instead of the maybe 90 feet that even a good MLB-class pitcher could throw this, it could easily be launched 300 meters (if it flies like a standard frag grenade from a 40mm launcher does, equal to the M16's range). What this means is that, yes, it would be plausible to get a live feed from inside a building - at a range far beyond that at which most untrained insurgent's can decently aim. Sure, you lose some element of suprise, but for situations such as a hostage negotiation (ransom makes good money for terrorists) if you tell them you'll be shooting in a camera beforehand, there's a very good chance they won't kill the hostage, YET you will have an "inside man" and a much greater chance of getting everyone out alive.
The only really critical technological issue I can see is getting the damn thing to land in a position where you have a good view. In case DARPA or whoever wants an idea for this, consider having a 15 second fuse in the grenade. Once it breaks, a small...hmm...oil reservoir breaks into an otherwise open chamber. When the oil settles to the lowest point of the grenade it will right itself. Put a flat bottom on the grenade and rounded edges and be sure the power, camera, and wireless system don't weigh much (and maybe make the camera slowly rotate 360 degrees) and you have a cheap, portable, easy to deploy remote recon system.
For added brownie points if you could develop an uplink system so that you can drop a larger uplink station where you fired it from and then get the hell outta dodge, then you could survey an entire area remotely with several of these i-balls and simply move back into the area with the appropriate amount of force if an enemy is spotted later.
Anyhow, this isn't a bad idea, since these are fired from a grenade launcher (i.e. AT RANGE) but I agree if these were merely hand-thrown their usefulness would be very limited.
Am I the only person who immediately thought of skeet shooting when they described an incoming object in a war zone?
To me this is obvious to the point of disbelief it doesn't already exist. I mean a year or two ago there was an article about a "throwable robot" that would be pitched behind enemy lines.
What bothers me is to mix the police state direction we are moving in, with RFID technology to end up with something similar to what Vernor Vinge depicts in "A Deepness in the Sky".
Think Deeply.
... and when can I watch Steve Jobs hurl one at Steve Ballmer?
Apple is going to take the untapped macho-military market by storm!
Instead of long lines of Apple Fanboys in front of Apple stores, see real, live Special Forces raids!
(Apple Store Manager): "They tossed some smoke/stun grenades in our store, and it a few seconds, our entire inventory of iBalls was gone!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I would like to order one but I need a couple additional features... It needs to be water proof. It needs to have no fog lenses. It needs to be able to withstand the temperatures of a woman's locker room shower.
and we still keep bombing the shit out of wedding parties, so why go to the extra expense of the camera?
At first glance it sounds like a great idea but... Obviously, you can't shoot this thing every time you want to advance. Therefore, you have to be aware that there might be an ambush or something ahead. However, if you shoot the device, you just gave up your position and alerted the enemy that you are coming. If you have already engaged the enemy, I don't see how this helps you either. You already know where they are. That means, that there are few times when this device would actually be useful, and probably not often enough to make it worth the effort to carry around and the money it would cost.
I'm confused, hasn't Sam Fisher been using this for years? http://splintercell.wikia.com/wiki/Sticky_Camera
Spread the actual battlefield with these, use some view-synthesis (if you can afford the war, you can afford the real-time computing power), and you've got better situational awareness than anyone else. If they have microphones, all the better...
Think about it, even if they _know_ these are there, a certain very tall, very wanted individual would dare not go out of the cave...
The Recon Scout Robot reminds me of this device. The benefit of this design is you could throw the robot on top of a roof or through a window. It can then be wirelessly piloted, all the while delivering a realtime video feed of whatever is in sight. Oh, and it is slightly softer than a whisper (not counting glass breaking through the window. There are two great videos on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3exsvQiH6Q and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiZ7GLRNYfY
What about the brutally repressive regime in Zimbabwe, the unrest in Somalia, or the conflicts between India and Pakistan, Iran threatening to wipe Israel off the map, or the Chinese occupation of Tibet, Muslim separatists in Thailand, violent organized crime in Mexico, Russia vs. Georgia, militants who throw acid on girls who go to school in Afghanistan and drill holes in peoples kneecaps? Yeah, the USA sucks!
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Also, Dude, "chinese fellow" is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.
"But this one goes to 11!"
The first thing that came to my mind was "cool, a technological Eye of Kilrogg".
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
I saw a demo at a robotics conference last year of a robot that essentially had this functionality. It was a cylinder that could carry several sorts of payloads (primarily a video camera.) And it could be thrown. This sounds like a much less useful version of that. Also, they have a sort of swarm intelligence, and can do recon in groups (though they work best with human operators.)
The mods must be crazy.
(1) capture bad guy
(2) gouge eyeballs
(3) use conventional grenade launcher to fire
eyeballs at other bad guys
(4) profit!
Subject says it all! See you an the playground, ladies ;) Oh don't forget Japan, either :)
I thought they had made a digital camera in the shape of a grenade to prevent people from stealing it. Oh well.
"No, I just threw away the last one, sir!"
The best addition you could make to a grenade is a feature whereby it blows up killing the person who thought it was OK to throw a grenade at someone.
i'd set up golf-range-like nets, to keep those fucking eyes WIDE SHUT. But, the net needn't be fiber or nylon. Make it electronic. Find the freq the thing is on, and then sweep the area. Make that eying enemy have to hunt down and bomb or jam eye-jammers.
Fucking waste of money, unless used for SAR of military escapees or civil disaster civilians. But, to use for military purposes is just asking to up the ante. Now, if someone could come up with magnetic fields that can bat that bastard ball back, WATCH OUT. You will be I-DENTI-FIED...
Might even turn into a feeding frenzy, as in "Hills have I's", hehehe...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
or graze it, with a certain model of 9mm pistol, will it get... GLOCK-COMA?
If it is equipped to blow with napalm, to destroy bones and teeth, will it be called the "I-Denti-Fryer"
(ba-dum-dum...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
SAY s/he is. Look how many Good Guys the USA turned into BAD GUYS after abandoning the "friends" the CIA made in the 70's. Created a LOT of angry ghosts/hornets/wasps who lost relatives or friends and are STILL seething about US, UK, and others' involvement in corrupting or trying to resource-hijack the Middle East/parts/all of Asia.
"Peace Through Superior Firepower" hardly changed, except in phraseology. The USA is ALWAYS seeking to be number one, in virtually EVERY category of science, military, and so on. But, in doing so it inevitably arrives at being likely target number one, then gripes when bombed. Can't have it both ways. Not everyone wants to be told what to do, told they are imps or children, or made to stand in line or play second fiddle.
I hope this new incoming (no pun intended) administration signals a marked change in approach, and a "repudiation" of some or many of the policies of that outgoing "derailastration". If the US can let Afghanistan and Iraq mature (hopefully quickly) enough to resolve their problems, then maybe the 3-year-pullout timetable will put a LOT of spec fors out of work, legitimately through wind-down, rather than blow-up. It's not the sort of work that SHOULD exist. It exists mostly because governments (or backers of the governments) want to rule, often don't want to compromise, and want to sell weapons to all sides, then profit. That's bad Karma. And retribution knows her time, anytime, any place.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
"Hi, I am a MarkVII fragmentation grenade and I will exploden in ten seconds... Hi, I am a MarkVII...."
...otherwise the enemy will project the images they want.
You know the answer to that... Because even if every guy in the room was a "bad guy", some liberal out there (a lot of them actually) would be crying because we didn't give them a chance to surrender.
You have to understand when you're on the ground in the middle of a war there are good guys, bad guys, and unknowns. We're talking about a wartime invention which militaries might be using in actual battle. Don't tell me you don't understand what a "bad guy" is.
I get it now. There are good guys and bad guys. Bad guys are the people who deserve to die. Only a liberal cry-baby would mourn the loss of a bad guy. It's as simple as that really. Why didn't I figure that out earlier.