ARE YOU READY FOR SOME SPYBALL?

Evil doers: if a sol­dier tosses what seems to be a rub­ber ten­nis ball into your secret hide­away, he does not want to play a set of dou­bles. He wants to spy on you.
An Israeli start-​​up has put together a spher­i­cal sen­sor, packed with 360-​​degree cam­eras and micro­phones, that can see and hear every­thing in a 25-​​meter radius, and send the pic­tures and sounds back to HQ.
The omni-​​directional images could give “field com­man­ders… a front-​​row seat inside ter­ror­ist lairs,” Defense News says. “If hostages are involved, res­cuers may be able to com­mu­ni­cate dis­creetly with cap­tives via micro­phones and speak­ers implanted in the devices.“
O.D.F. Optronics calls its orb — sur­prise, sur­prise — Eyeball. And pro­to­types of the lit­tle guy have already been ordered by the Pentagon and by Israeli forces.
“All the elec­tron­ics inside are float­ing, and will be housed in three lay­ers of rub­ber, which serve as shock absorbers,” O.D.F. chief Ehud Gal tells Defense News. “You can throw it, or shoot it from a spe­cially equipped snipers rifle, and it can stick to the wall or start trans­mit­ting as soon as it sta­bi­lizes.“
With Eyeball’s spe­cially designed reflec­tive lens, “every­thing is in focus and you have an unlim­ited depth of field,” Gal adds.
“The raw image trans­mit­ted by the omni-​​directional lens has a dis­torted shape.” But a cou­ple of algo­rithms chew up the footage, and spit back out a scene we peo­ple can under­stand. Game, set, match.
THERE’S MORE: The spy­ball has been revealed, thanks to Defense Tech pal (and Gizmodo guru) Joel Johnson. Behold!

April 20th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.