DARPA developing threat sensing binoculars

The night-vision thing has definitely been done a time or two before, but DARPA's latest initiative is looking beyond the darkness as it hopes to create a set of binoculars that can actually detect threats and warn soldiers of impending death. Taking a note from Star Wars, the jokingly dubbed "Luke's Devices" is actually considered a "cognitive technology threat warning system," and utilizes brain monitoring to bring attention to spikes in activity before the person can actually realize he / she has noticed something awry. Among the gizmos that'll bring this all together are "neurally-based target detection signatures, ultra-low power analog / digital hybrid signal processing electronics, wide-angle optics, large pixel-count digital imagers, and cognitive visual processing algorithms." Yeah, sounds pretty complicated to us too, but unlike snazzy concepts we've seen before, the gurus behind these goggles reportedly hope to have prototypes ready for battle in just a few years.

[Via Wired]

[McGinley @ Apr 12th 2007 8:34AM]

Spidey-Sense tingling!!

[Don't Panic! @ Apr 12th 2007 8:46AM]

Zaphod Beeblebrox would love these. Once again Douglass Adams twisted vision is realized in the real world.

[Dave @ Apr 12th 2007 8:54AM]

Sounds like a good excuse to shoot unarmed civilians. "His brain was glowing! I had no choice!"

[Jason Sweby @ Apr 12th 2007 9:41AM]

"I've got a bad feeling about this"

[Atdt1991 @ Apr 12th 2007 11:02AM]

"They were a double pair of Joo Janta 200
Super Chromatic Peril Sensitive
Sunglasses, which had been specially
designed to help people develop a
relaxed attitude to danger. At the first
hint of trouble they turn totally black
and thus prevent you from seeing
anything that might harm you."

[Kit @ Apr 12th 2007 11:02AM]

this was the first thing I thought of when I read this

[mastershake @ Apr 12th 2007 11:28AM]

They already have glasses that make you blind to threats, they give them out at the Democratic conventions.

All these are really doing is photo analysis. Intel analysts study photos of both known and unknown things and learn to tell what they are seeing. Contrary to popular belief sat photos aren't always as clear cut as in the movies, it more or less photographic artifact forensics. In recent years this has been assisted by computers, now they want to put that same tech in bino's.
Example; I look out into the desert, pixel region L29-43 x V10-13 show resemblance to a tank, or maybe rotor wash. All I see is tan pixels moving around, If I can even see them. The bino's are helping me not overlook things. These would be great in search and rescue, a single swimmer in the vast ocean creates a slight discoloration of a pixel, and the bino's alert you to a possible survivor!

[David @ Apr 12th 2007 10:36PM]

This sounds familiar. Honda has been developing this for their cars for a few years:
http://world.honda.com/HDTV/IntelligentNightVision/200408/
and
http://www.ae-plus.com/Key%20topics/kt-safety-news7.htm

However, Honda's would eventually be a screen in a car instead big goggles on a person. Sounds cool though.

[martin ellender @ May 1st 2007 12:35PM]

In an attempting to escape a mind-shatteringly dull career in accountancy, I signed up for a correspondence course in creative writing. This article gave me an idea for a story. Erm... here it is.

The binoculars whispered a single word to me: "THREAT". I stopped listening to Dickie, I had barely been listening anyway even though he seemed pretty wound up about something. For a couple of seconds I just lay there dazed, staring at the distant dusk skyline as a red light started to blink on and off in the corner of the view screen. My heart clenched like a fist and then started to hammer. I could feel the artery in my throat bucking with each pulse.
"Dickie! Shut up!", I hissed and immediately the binoculars repeated their warning. My hands had picked up a slight tremor sending the binoculars, at maximum magnification, skittering over the distant tatters of buildings. They compensated with a soft whine and my vision steadied, but as I swept the binoculars over the horizon and zoomed back to near-normal, no target was resolved.
We were lying on our bellies, exposed on a rocky outcrop just above the foothills of the Zagros mountains, tumbling down to the Bam Valley below. A wrinkle of shattered limestone provided sparse cover and from this treacherous vantage point we peered along the broad, arid trough beneath us towards the shattered city of Kerman, sitting ragged in the dust. The slumped remains of office blocks and houses looked like rotten teeth; the city was a monstrous jawbone grinning back at us from the mouth of the valley.
"Please. Do not...", Dickie began but I cut him off, still raking the terrain. "I've got something. Now for chrissake SHUT UP!". Again; "THREAT", and the red light blinked faster. I heard Dickie let out a long, slow breath through his cavernous nostrils, then after a pause he shuffled forwards on his elbows and rolled out his screen. He had been tense all day, maybe for days actually, but I didn't care. It would have to wait. He snarled at me, through gritted teeth.
"All readings within tolerance. This is not a glitch. You've seen something but you don't know it. Now do your job and find it". I wasn't used to being spoken to like that, not by Dickie, but the minutes passed in silence as I peered into distant shadows, willing them to take shape and give up whatever it was that had snagged my subconscious.

Dickie built the binoculars. The first time I met him was when I was called to a briefing. I had been watching a bunker, hiding under a camouflaged tarpaulin on a hillside in Mosul when my terminal vibrated softly. A simple message with coordinates; rendezvous for pickup. It took me three days to creep there, and I was flown immediately to Turkey then hauled half-way across Europe on a succession of flights that passed in a daze of fatigue and disorientation. Eventually I was swept through an anonymous base, given some papers to sign and then sat, blinking and confused, in a dim briefing room pierced by bright pillars of spring sunshine. An impressively-decorated selection of generals stood to my right, and a gaggle of industry suits to my left, muttering against opposite walls like shy adolescents at a school disco.
At the front of the room stood a thin, sallow man, nervously tugging on the lapels of his uniform although he looked like a typical lab-rat. He was introduced to me as Dr. Richard Noisewater-Smith, my new partner, and at that precise moment I silently named him Dickie. I would know him by that name for the rest of our time together. Formalities were dispensed with and Dickie was invited to get to the point.
"These", he began, "are a breakthrough in soldier-portable visual threat warning devices". He began to pace, barely audible and clearly uncomfortable. I hadn't noticed the binoculars, but as Dickie approached the low table on which they rested, it became clear that they were the focal point of the room. The suits eyed them with a sort of reverence, I guessed that someone was about to make a lot of money. The military men were a study of pointed indifference.
"Ah... recently there have been advances in the disparate fields of optics, digital imaging, cognitive processing, and neural target detection signatures". Rumblings from the medallion men. One of them actually snorted. "With the support of our private sector partners", a gesture towards the suits, "I have been working on bringing these technologies together in the form of the piece of ... ah... equipment you see before you." They didn't look like anything special.
"In short, these binoculars can tell you when you are in danger before you even know it yourself." I just stared. "Captain... ah... I would invite you to consider this; have you ever glimpsed something out of the corner of your eye and only realised seconds later what it was that you saw? Or perhaps you have experienced that peculiar intuition that you are being watched?"
"Of course Doctor". I had, although I found myself fixated by Dickie's enormous nose, wondering if it got in the way when he was soldering.
"Well, often these feelings arise from the... ah... subconscious parts of the mind." Dickie warmed to his subject, forgetting his nerves. "We are subjected to a constant torrent of information, flooding into the cortex across the kaleidoscope of our senses. Your mid-brain is constantly working to reduce the bandwidth of that mass of data; filtering, selecting, mapping, cataloging and only allowing the important information from our surroundings to impact upon our conscious thoughts." I nodded, almost certain that I understood. "Well, Captain, the process isn't perfect. Sometimes we miss things, or make mistakes. Our instincts have been dulled by the trappings of civilisation. These binoculars are made to work directly with that primal, reptilian part of your brain that sometimes, unheeded, picks something out of that passing flood of data and says danger".
All eyes on me. My mouth worked silently for a moment. "Why am I here?", although of course I already knew the answer.
"Because your record as a sniper is unparalleled. Tests throughout your career have shown that your visual acuity is unsurpassed and you therefore represent the best possible test subject for this equipment. Furthermore, you know the terrain intimately, specialising in reconnaissance and navigation. We think this equipment could tip the balance of the current conflict in our favour, and we need it field tested and in production as soon as possible." The faces of the medallion men registered grim assent.

In some ways we made a good team. There was no doubting Dickie's credentials, and he had just enough military experience not to be an impediment in the field. We had spent a fortnight camping out, camouflaged under the stars, creeping and watching as occasional battles unfolded around us. Dickie took notes, tested responses, calibrated and tinkered, spending most of his waking hours poring over his little computer screen. However, it was clear that we were never going to be friends. Professionalism and training kept us on an even keel, but Dickie was not an easy person to spend time with. He was painfully introverted and had little to say for himself, and I don't think I saw him smile even once. So, for want of company, my mouth just flapped in the breeze whenever we were safe enough to relax. I had lengthy one-sided conversations with him, telling him for hours about my childhood, my home, my conquests in the bedroom, my kills on the battlefield. To start with his responses were functional, minimally polite, but eventually he just ignored me. To be honest I didn't care and kept right on talking. But conversation was the last thing on my mind now. Peering silently into the deepening gloom of the valley, scouring every distant window and doorway, I saw nothing.
"Are you sure these things work Dickie?" I asked, feigning nonchalance to cover my nerves.
Immediately - "THREAT" and then, unexpectedly, a blood-curdling roar from behind me. My heart leaped again and I wheeled around as fast as I could. As I turned towards Dickie there was a soft chime from the binoculars. Target resolved. He had sprung to his feet and was swinging the butt of his rifle high over his head, holding it by the muzzle. Time slowed as it began an inexorable downward arc towards my unprotected head, with all the force Dickie's slender frame could put behind it. His eyes were bright with rage, and his sunburned complexion had deepened to scarlet. He was unrecognisable, his face a mask. But then, when had I actually bothered to properly look at the man recently?

"DO NOT..."

As the butt fell, shock pinned me to the ground. Had I picked something up in the line of his jaw? The way the stringy muscles in his long neck were bunched and set? The way he spat each word at me like a poisoned dart? Not consciously. I had spent day after day with this man, had I ever tried to understand him? No - I had ignored him and talked at him and perhaps even taken some pleasure in his silent awkwardness.

"...CALL..."

What had we been talking about before the binoculars came to life? Why had he finally spoken up? I struggled to remember. I think I'd been having a joke with him; advancing my theories on why Dickie the lab-rat would run like the wind if he ever came face to face with a real towel-head. He wasn't the friendliest chap in the world but you had to be able to have a joke, right? I could see the grain of the rifle butt and the dull lustre of polished wood as it plunged towards me, gathering momentum, unstoppable.

"...ME DICKIE"