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IBM Files Patent For Bullet-Dodging Bionic Armor
An anonymous reader writes with news that IBM has filed a patent for "Bionic body armor" that would protect a wearer from long-range gunfire by detecting the incoming bullets and administering small shocks to the appropriate muscles required for moving out of the way. Quoting the patent: "When a marksman (such as a sniper) is attempting to fire a projectile from a firearm, the marksman typically prefers to be as far away from the target as possible, thus giving him or her a head start for the escape after the firing. As an example, the longest reported sniper hit was from a distance of about 2500 meters, resulting in a time of flight of about 4 seconds for the projectile/bullet. Had the target been aware of the inbound projectile, avoiding it by simply walking away would have been possible." After detecting the projectile, the armor would calculate the trajectory and "stimulate the target to move in a predefined manner ... sufficient to avoid any contact with the approaching projectile."
Indeed. Considering that the example of the longest recorded sniper shot has a "four second" travel time, one would assume that the majority of sniper shots will take only a second or two. That means that the detection, calculation, and stimulation would have to take place in maybe a hundredth of a second to be useful.
That doesn't mean you can make it work in 10 years or less.
I guess we should be patenting everything we can possibly think of, now. Sigh.
Probably the lamest idea ever. Long range sniper kills of this type represent an insignificant minority of deaths, they really think people are going to wear this crap?
The detection method sounds flaky and lame. What I would pay to see though is the other side create an 'electromagnetic' interference device that causes this armor to 'stimulate' the wearer to dive into a brick wall or something.
FTFA "The projectile may be detected in the detecting step by emitting an electromagnetic wave from a projectile detector and receiving the electromagnetic wave after the electromagnetic wave has been reflected back toward the projectile detector by the projectile."
Or in other words, radar.
-- Alastair
The vast majority of sniper rounds are super sonic. (the speed of sound is only about 1,100 ft/s)
So the bullet will hit it's target before the sound wave warning has arrived
So the armor emits an electromagnetic signal that can detect, instantly, the movement of a bullet, can calculate the trajectory of said bullet, and somehow ensure that the user is warned enough to move out of the way of the bullet. In the example that they give, the bullet is traveling at 625 meters per second, the size of a bullet coming from a typical sniper rifle is very small. So this armor can detect, say the size of a small marble, from 2500 meters away?
Assuming that this armor can perfect and accurately detect incoming small arms projectiles and warn the user in time, how can the armor know the ground terrain that the wearer has to physically negotiate? Say the person is standing in two feet of snow, or in sand in the desert, perhaps the person is in two feet of water, or they are walking down stairs? The armor requires the user to be an acrobat from what I can tell. And no matter what, unless the armor can fully mobilize the wearer and move them automatically, this system still leaves room for grave human error, meaning it's hardly reliable.
And won't people figure out a way to beat the armor, or beat the system. Imagine a sniper rifle that fires a decoy bullet, that knocks the target down (as he evades the first bullet) and puts the armor wearer in a prone position on the ground, making him or her easy to target. Or perhaps a decoy bullet is shot from one barrel and the real bullet follows in a pre-calculated trajectory requiring no manual aiming for the sniper. Perhaps a bullet can be made undetectable to the electromagnetic pulse that the armor gives off. Maybe the armor can be jammed? You fire a bullet with an electromagnetic pulse destabilizer and then pick off your target when the armor fails.
I should mention that I live like three or four miles from IBM's headquarters in the Hudson Valley, so I hope they let my friends who work there bring in their buddies (or just me) for some live fire demonstrations where we can snipe at blowup dolls wearing million dollar armor with some high tech rifles.
This is what happens when a company pays its employees for each successful patent, and when employees are even told to put patent applications in their yearly personal objectives, which affect their annual bonuses. You end up with employees spending a large chunk of their work week filing for patents on any random idea that enters their head, no matter how impractical, obvious, or unrelated to the company's actual research and development.
But there are several obstacles which I can't see being solved within the next decade or two (I'm being optimistic):
First of all, there's accuracy. You don't want your VIP actually walking to intercept the bullet.
Second, size. If your radar is so precise as to detect a bullet even 500 yards away, it's gotta be pretty big.
Related to this, there's energy. For an awesome radar (or anything else) like that, you'd need big-ass batteries, and/or to recharge every couple of hours. Especially in battle, this would be a no-go.
Finally, if they claim that this is really for VIP's under high risk of an assassination attempt, and not for military/police, then the device would probably have to be invisible. I don't think Obama or Bill Gates wants to walk around with a huge thingamajig on his head (remember "Child abduction is not funny"?).
Seriously, I don't know if it's a good idea to give somebody a patent for an idea if they haven't addressed so many key issues.
weinersmith
Or do they actually have something? Personally I don't see it working that well. A system that detects where the fire comes from and automatically returns fire with a sniper round, or an RPG, would be much bigger deterrent IMO.
So, given the knowledge that a bullet is heading for you, you would opt to stay put instead of avoiding it, on the off chance that another hazard would present itself?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
...or right into the path of the SAME bullet.
I mean, how accurate can this thing be? Maybe the bullet detected by the suit was going to pass two feet to the left of you. If the suit makes you jump to the left ... ooops!
No sig today...
in that case even a bulletproof vest would be irrelevant because it cannot stand repeated hits anyway.
that's why a .22lr smg can be far more dangerous than a 9x19mm pistol.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Actually, the plates generally in use by NATO nations are designed to stop up to 3 hits from 7.62 rounds. Now, granted "designed to" doesn't mean they will, but if you're suggesting that the plate is useless after only one hit from a 5.56 round, then you're just plain wrong.
As you can see, it's not made of small discs. The reason for this is easy to see, IMO: having one big plate allows for the kynetic energy of the bullet to be spread over a large surface. I.e., instead of getting hit a lot of force in a tiny area as the bullet would do, the victim will get hit with the same force spread across a big area, which will make the pressure per square centimetre much smaller. Using small discs (I guess you mean like chainmail) would probably turn a smallish entry hole into a big one due to the kynetic energy not being spread enough. At least, it would mean having bones breaking and inner tissue rupturing.
The trig. is easy, sure, the problem is getting accurate data points on a tiny piece of metal moving at twice the speed of sound on a vector almost directly towards you.
Luckily the patent office accepts patents for impossible things.
No sig today...
You're assuming the only sensors are mounted on you; that is not necessarily true. If you're traveling in a team you could easy have 6+ sensors, all but one of which would not be directly in the line of fire.
Well, if you can link the sensors together this could also be used to have people jump in front of the bullet to defend the target. Think President + Secret Service.
If you throw gravel at several hundred meters per second so as to get the doppler signature required for the system to act, it had better dodge your gravel.
Of course, that won't be very efficient; the gravel would probably disintegrate.
Hmm, maybe if you make metal gravel? And make it aerodynamic? Hmm...
A reasonable practical concern. However, it's just a patent for "futuretech," not a practical invention (yet?). Also, I don't know how accurate small phased-array radar systems are, or by how much you could improve the accuracy of your estimate of the bullet's state by incorporating a dynamic model (using, e.g., a Kalman filter). But I think that both questions need answering before this idea, even with "existing" technology, can be dismissed.
I would think it better to use visual HUD and/or audio cues to let the wearer know they are in the path of fire. This whole idea of the suit controlling your movements involuntarily seems like a poor idea created by someone who's probably never actually been shot at before. (note: neither have I)
Personally I find it hilarious that you are actually suggesting we use a highly sophisticated machine to control a suit which turns the person inside into a meat shield to protect someone else. Surely by the time we've actually invented this amazing device we can figure out something else to put between the speeding bullet and the president rather than another fucking human being! :).
I was trying to point out that going faster than sound is only a fundamental issue for sound based tracking. Fast & small objects are *hard* to track with other methods, not impossible.
You claimed it was _completely_ useless (emphasis yours) for situations like the one they quoted. The idea that they hadn't considered that the bullets may be moving faster than sound was the one I was responding to.
Oh, yes, that works well to track a small, high velocity object in a similarly cluttered field.
It is exactly the high velocity that makes it so easy to track. It would stand out like a sore thumb on doppler radar. And since you only care about bullets aimed at you, it will also be almost stationary in the radar's field of view.