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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."
I get so much shit thrown at me at the daycare everyday I could really use this.
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.
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.
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
IBM Files Patent For Bullet-Dodging Bionic Armor
Reading that title, I got a mental image of body armor sensing incoming bullets and dodging them by jumping off of the wearer.
The sniper was Canadian, so I'm pretty sure the armour wouldn't have saved the target in the long run. The sniper was told that the guy he killed was responsible for blowing up ten skids of imported microbrewery beer. If the rifle didn't work, that sniper would have run down there with a dull, rusty spoon, cut the guy's balls off and beaten him to death with them.
It's the Canadian Way.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
New goal for terrorists - trigger the response in the armor making the wearer look weird and become exhausted.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
How about a chair?
Will it allow the wearer to avoid being hit by a flying chair?
If yes, then IBM might actually be able to sell it to a few people.
...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...
Right into the path of another bullet. Or a truck. Or an electric fence. etc.
You've obviously never been hit with a 5.56 round while wearing ceramic body armour. That little 8 gram bullet is like getting punched. You don't really feel the point of impact, but you are knocked sideways anyway. And the ceramic body armour breaks after only one bullet. After that you are on your own.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
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.
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.
You're talking about the NIJ testing requirement for level 3 plates. They are required to stop 3 .308 rounds. NIJ certified level 4 plates are required to only stop 1 30-06 Armor Piercing round. This ends up having very strange effects on plate design. It is correct that a level 4 ceramic plate can shatter and become ineffective after stopping only one round.
Other weirdness of the design of plates is the things they will and won't stop. Some level 3 plates will stop the required 3 .308 rounds, but will be penetrated by M193 5.56MM rounds. Others will stop M193 all day long but be penetrated by M855 5.56MM. Some will stop M193 but not M855, and vice versa.
It's strange, but that's how the NIJ testing standards for level 3 and level 4 work currently. There are more than a couple of websites around that do other ad-hoc testing on armor plates and vests to try to do more extensive testing.
He was probably thinking of Dragon Skin which IIRC the military decided was too expensive for our soldiers to wear but kicked the current armor in tests quite badly. Damned shame we can't get rid of the kickbacks and really stupid programs like trying to catch a missile with a missile then maybe we wouldn't have so many of our soldiers coming back in body bags.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
jump to the left ... ooops!
and then a step to the right!
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.
Fortunately, I've never actually been hit with either a 5.56 or a 7.62 myself. But I've seen people get hit, and I'm not sure if there were multiple hits on the same plate or not. In Lebanon two years ago we couldn't even exchange our equipment for two weeks, and I wasn't keeping score of who was getting hit or where (front, back). But I can attest that no one was seriously injured by a bullet through the armour. I should probably mention that we were absorbing a nice mix of 5.56 (M16), 7.62 short (AK47) and 5.54 (AK74) rounds (and the occasional mortar or RPG!).
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
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 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)
Actually, it sounds like the creators have been shot at before, or had access to people who have. When you first notice incoming fire, your brain has an almost comical "WTF?" moment that lasts at least a half second. If you're well trained and/or have been shot at before, your "lizard brain" is already screaming at your muscles to get moving. If not, you might stand there for as long as 3 or 4 seconds before you can get your thinker running and get moving. A flashing red light on a HUD indicating "incoming fire" would probably be just enough warning for you to realize you've been hit by enemy fire, so it's not a complete surprise. I'd have loved something like this suit when I was in Afghanistan.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.