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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."
Right into the path of another bullet. Or a truck. Or an electric fence. etc.
I wonder how they want to detect an approaching projectile. By sound wouldn't give really much of a head start. Anyway, detecting a projectile, calculating an approximate flight path and stimulating including biomechanical lag would have to happen in a really short period of time.
Well, light is an electromagnetic signal I guess.
If the wearer had a 360* light sensor on top of his head, and it was tuned to detect small flashes in the particular light signature of a rifle flash, something like this could work I suppose.
While I'm pretty confident that the electronics could react fast enough for at least a 1000meter range, I'm really not sure how fast the human body responds to the electrical impulses. If the last time I touched live 110v AC is any indication that's pretty bloody fast.
I suppose the logic is this:
Without the suit, you WILL be hit by a bullet.
WITH the suit, you MIGHT accidentally fling yourself off a cliff or whatever.
I'll take the latter odds over the former odds any day of the week.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
If the wearer is about to pull the trigger on his M72 LAW when someone fires a rifle at him, do you think it's a Good Idea (TM) to jerk the person around?
Without the suit, you WILL be hit by a bullet.
WITH the suit, you MIGHT accidentally blow up your whole team.
A bullet is a very very small target for any radar to detect, even with very sensitive equipment. However something moving at 1000m/s is a very distinct doppler rader signature, wich makes it MUCH easier to detect. From there this is plausible.
It's just a patent, it doesn't represent any actual project planned and certainly is no waste of bailout/stimulous package money.
I for one welcom such advances, as some day our troops will be wearing exoskeletons which may be able to make movements for the wearer - this is a step towards the machine revolution, where we are all anhiliated by robotic exoskeletons where the human is either dead or no longer has control... oh crap.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
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?
Finally -- a voice of reason.
What you say describes exactly what Bruce Schneier calls "movie-plot terrorist threats". People who think up this crap are the same as parents who take separate airline flights so the their children won't lose both in case of an airline accident. But they go together in the same car to the airport -- a far more dangerous proposition.
It's called lack of perspective.
There just isn't a way to choose in advance between the plane that landed in the river and the more recent one that crashed with the loss of 49 people.