Roomba's sniper-detecting cousin, the REDOWL PackBot
posted Oct 4th 2005 3:35PM
We all knew that the technology behind helpful little
Roomba (and its cousin
Scooba) couldn't remain benign for long, and now
iRobot has slid deeper into bed with the U.S. military, adding sniper-detecting gear to its already-deployed
PackBots. At yesterday's U.S. Army convention in
Washington, iRobot was showing off its new PackBot-mountable REDOWL (Robotic Enhanced Detection Outpost With Lasers)
system, which is capable of zeroing-in on an enemy sniper's location and videotaping his surroundings with a Sony
camcorder. The REDOWL (named after the head-rotating bird of prey) is composed of a laser rangefinder, sound detection
equipment, thermal imager, GPS receiver, and four separate cameras. REDOWL-equipped PackBots (which had previously been
used to locate and detonate explosives) are able to
distinguish between different muzzle sounds and are not fooled by gunshot echos in urban battlegrounds. Fortunately
there are no immediate plans to attach guns to these bots, which could have created some dicey situations when soldiers
pop open that celebratory can of beer after a battle.
[Via The Raw Feed]
screenshot from halo 3?
what if the sniper were to shoot the camera?
The camera would break.
History of iRobot would indicate that it really isn't a cross-over from Roomba-tech that is moving the mil-spec stuff forward, but the other way around. From a speech the CEO gave this year, they've done a lot of work for the military (Packbot, etc) and even attempts at mining and other industries over the years. Their website is definitely split down the middle, one side is consumer tech (ala Roomba/Scooba) and the other is military. With the recent (as in the current administration's) decision to force/limit all DARPA research to that having an associated provable military application, is it any wonder that all great new tech has a military product associated with it?
If it detects the sniper location via noise, what's to keep from using an RF based system to have multiple guns fire at the same time as the sniper from different locations? I'm thinking of a radio-controlled trigger. The other guns could fire blanks for all it matters so long as all go off at once. Or better yet, they fire slightly before and confuse the device...
Basically, I think this idea will be easily defeated.
The logistics involved in setting up and executing your radio-controlled triggering scenario are substantial, and are unlikely to be encountered in a combat zone such as Iraq or Afghanistan. While I am not saying it would be impossible to defeat an acoustic detection system such as this one, it's also not as easy as you seem to think it is.
The logistics involved in setting up and executing your radio-controlled triggering scenario are substantial, and are unlikely to be encountered in a combat zone such as Iraq or Afghanistan. While I am not saying it would be impossible to defeat an acoustic detection system such as this one, it's also not as easy as you seem to think it is.