Antisniper robot in the works

[leejo]

Pretty cool device here:
http://www.boston.com/business/techn...sniper_device/

IRobot Corp. of Burlington, famous for its robotic vacuum cleaners, has teamed up with researchers at Boston University to develop a military robot capable of spotting enemy snipers.

''You'll actually see the sniper before the smoke disappears from the shot," said Joe Dyer, iRobot's executive vice president and general manager.

Unless of course you're the target and the sniper is good.

[SmokingTarpan]

Kinda cool. I also remember a Discovery channel show a while back that was featuring technology to do the same thing. It used a series of cameras and sensors to actually record the path of the incoming bullet, and trace it back to the source.

This gizmo here seems a whole lot more useful, though.

[leejo]

Yup. Get a datalink to the orbiting hawk and within seconds homeboy could have a hellfire up is...what's that word...asshat.

[Karkianman101]

I think you mean 'his' *narrow eyes*

[CingularDuality]

Originally Posted by SmokingTarpan

Kinda cool. I also remember a Discovery channel show a while back that was featuring technology to do the same thing. It used a series of cameras and sensors to actually record the path of the incoming bullet, and trace it back to the source.

This gizmo here seems a whole lot more useful, though.

I remember when the USMC was testing that in General Krulack's warfighting labs. It was pretty cool, the sensors were audio and they basically triangulated the origin of the sound of the rifle firing in relation to the device. The one I saw was mounted on a dune buggy and the sensors and computer were attached to an M2 and camera on high speed servos. As soon as the sniper rifle was fired, the sensors recorded, the computer triangulated and the machine gun and camera snapped to point at the location of the sniper. A human operator sitting in a foxhole, safe 'n sound, looks at the camera, verifies the target and actually does the trigger pulling. Next thing you know, the sniper is reduced to mere chunks of flesh and bones by a burst of fifty caliber lead. It was pretty impressive...

[Rahn]

There's also radar that catches incoming mortar rounds in Iraq and finds where they've been launched from in seconds.

So now insurgents know to only launch about 3 rounds before they can expect a few Strykers to come barreling down on their position, counter mortar fire or a Apache attack. Probably a combination of them.