Buried Camera for Hidden Foes

Okay. Let’s say you want to keep watch over a ter­ror­ist hide-​​out — a close watch. You can’t just hook a sur­veil­lance cam­era to the side of the build­ing, or the belly of the cave. You’ve got to hide it some­where. A new Israeli inven­tion might be able to help.
The Mini Unattended Ground Imager (MUGI) is a 9-​​pound, jug-​​sized “mul­ti­spec­tral, medium-​​range sur­veil­lance sys­tem designed to detect, iden­tify and option­ally tar­get indi­vid­u­als on the move,” accord­ing to Defense News. But the best part is that the device can be “buried under­ground, with only its periscope viewfinder pro­trud­ing some four inches above ground. The finger-​​sized pro­tru­sion is then eas­ily con­cealed by any num­ber of cam­ou­flaged items or envi­ron­men­tal debris and remains in place from 10 days to three months, depend­ing on the oper­a­tional life of the lithium bat­ter­ies and exter­nal power packs.

Designed in response to Israeli mil­i­tary require­ments and endorsed by… Israels Ministry of Defense, MUGI fea­tures a day­time color cam­era and night­time infrared sen­sor for round-​​the-​​clock recog­ni­tion of sus­pected ter­ror­ists or intrud­ers.
During the day, MUGI has a range of some 3,000 meters, but at night is lim­ited to about 1,000 meters. A mechan­i­cal device hold­ing both cam­eras within the MUGIs car­bon fiber can­is­ter enables rota­tion and tilt­ing, for hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal scan­ning as well as zoom­ing.
[In addi­tion to being buried,] the MUGI also can be prepack­aged in Hollywood-​​style props that dont have to be buried, but are strate­gi­cally posi­tioned along streets, val­leys or ter­races in high-​​threat areas. Whether par­tially buried or dis­guised by props, the only ele­ment that must remain unob­structed is a small 1.2 inch-by-3.2 inch sur­veil­lance slit. 

May 19th, 2005 | Sabra Tech, You can run... | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.