General Dynamics UK touts near real-time 3D maps for soldiers

It looks like soldiers could one day have their own tab key of sorts to call up detailed, 3D maps at will, at least if the folks at General Dynamics UK have their way. As Physorg reports, they've developed a "near real-time" 3D map system that makes use of an array of different technologies including LIDAR, thermal imaging and x-ray backscatter techniques to not only display buildings and streets, but objects and people inside buildings as well. The use of LIDAR also promises to provide measurements of doors, windows, and alleys with "millimeter accuracy." All that obviously makes the system, dubbed Masthead, slightly less than portable, however, although General Dynamics says it'd be able to be carried in the back of a military vehicle or civilian 4x4, or in a plane for that matter. Of course, like most such projects, General Dynamics isn't just setting its sights to military applications, with it also touting Masthead's potential benefits for police forces in planning security measures for large events, to name one example.

[Via Physorg]

[Flashpoint @ Mar 31st 2008 4:57PM]

Now all I need is a Nanomuscle suit and some North Koreans.

[papu @ Mar 31st 2008 5:04PM]

then we'd have a crysis

[Bobs @ Mar 31st 2008 5:28PM]

But not north koreans in nano suits.

[UKNigel @ Mar 31st 2008 5:34PM]

Wallhacks, now that's cheating! Next thing you know there will be an autoaim bot built into helmets.

[Reader @ Mar 31st 2008 9:26PM]

Worst part about this is that you can't cuss them out for being hackers after they headshot you with aimbot.

[hypereric @ Mar 31st 2008 5:04PM]

I just want to know if it will let me see some boobies. If it does, I'm sold!

[mymaclife @ Mar 31st 2008 5:08PM]

Thankfully you won't be able to afford it!

[hypereric @ Mar 31st 2008 5:20PM]

@mymaclife:

What?!?!? What do you think I do here in my mom's basement? Sit around, surfing engadget and playing video games by day and surfing pr0n by night?

Well, OK. But two minutes at the most on the pr0n (three if I'm lucky). The rest of the time I spend concoting my devious plots for world domination.

"I'm a driver. I'm a winner. Things are gonna change soon, I can feel it."

[Denver_80203 @ Mar 31st 2008 5:06PM]

24 just got one more level of credibility.

[Anonymoose @ Mar 31st 2008 5:14PM]

man, halo4 is going to be the best ever

[G5 Power @ Mar 31st 2008 5:20PM]

My dad was telling me about a work colleague who served in Afghanistan and about the daily struggle with roadside bombs, the British Army had developed a technology that could provide real-time feedback about the road ahead to your helmet and alert you of bombs a few hundred yards away. The Americans desperately want this technology, my dad told me that we (the British) won't give it to them because they have to release how it works under the freedom of information act, allowing enemy troops to figure out ways of defeating the system.

This could explain why a lot of recent military advances in technology have some kind of UK base.

[andy @ Mar 31st 2008 5:36PM]

I can tell you for sure and for certain that this is absolutely not true. "National Security" can be cited as a reason to outright deny any FOI request.

Additionally, if there are inventive aspects to the system, they can also get a US patent on it, and the patent will not go public (i.e., will be confidential) until it is determined to no longer be a matter of "national security." As a matter of fact, ALL US patent applications are reviewed for national security interests before they are published or "examined", and if they disclose matters of national security, they are made confidential and any rights to be found after examination are held in abeyance until the disclosed subject matter is no longer of "national security".

[Sammy D Kat @ Mar 31st 2008 6:15PM]

That's BS. First, you'd have to have a system that can remotely detect IEDs. These are so varied in their construction, that there would be no way to develop a system that would be able to ID all of them, let alone without contact.

Second, you'd need to have a way to mark those IEDs, such as personel reporting the coordinates via GPS. Again, IEDs are cheap & easy to implement and even if someone were crazy enough to risk sniper fire or ambush merely to document them, they would probably be detonated before the info was uploaded.

The best way to defeat an IED is blow it up, not defuse it, but be my guest.

Your dad is telling you stories kid.

[mymaclife @ Mar 31st 2008 6:19PM]

I stopped reading at 'my Dad was telling me...'

[McFly @ Mar 31st 2008 10:40PM]

my dad told me not to believe what others kids say their dads told them.
it's good advice believe me

[trentyn @ Mar 31st 2008 11:45PM]

@andy, FOI is totally the wrong way to go about this, IF the tech exists they should purchase a licence/product/reproduction rights from the creator/patent owner. the UK could just as easily claim it was "national security" to keep the tech secret.

@sammy, who said squat about IED's, it could work off the same (though refined) tech as a tresure hunter (metal detector). but i do agree i think it unlikely that if it existed it would have been shared.

@G5 sorry man i think you've been hoodwined. cool story though, wouldn't suprise me at all if the brits had done it and didn't share it. right up their humour alley!

[Travis Pulley @ Mar 31st 2008 5:37PM]

Wallhack! I hear they already have an aimbot too.

[laokoon2600 @ Mar 31st 2008 6:24PM]

skynet->AIMBOT activate DOOM /killall

[Reader @ Mar 31st 2008 9:27PM]

I'll wait for the money dupe cheat. I could actually use that.

[YoMomma @ Mar 31st 2008 6:53PM]

but can it play doom?

[Wallrider @ Mar 31st 2008 8:58PM]

Why does every good technology and idea has to be f******* military?
What is it in the west that everyone is just so goddamm obssessed with weapons?
In the 80s Americans studied the laser as a weapon while Japanese used it as a revolutionary new storage system, the CD.
Now we see them developing robot suits to help the elderly and workers everywhere, the Americans? Guess what, super soldiers. ¬¬

Am I the only one who sees the potential of this technology everywhere in our daily lives? Just imagine surgeries done with X-ray like glasses and the images superimposed to the doctor...

[Armoured @ Mar 31st 2008 10:10PM]

yeh those stupid americans just want advances in the military and yet they are still getting there asses kicked in iraq and everywhere.
there more to this world than killing each other, and this 3D map thing is just going to far.

[Reader @ Mar 31st 2008 10:58PM]

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not Armoured, but this 3D map deal is on your side of the ocean, not ours.