The New York Times Magazine’s “Year in Ideas” issue is out today. And I wrote up three of the ideas inside:
* “The Crawl” Makes You Stupid
* Microblindness
* Sonic Gunman Locator, The
Unfortunately, the online versions of these articles all cut off the last paragraphs of what are already short stories. The stories have been fixed. So I’ll paste the full text of the “Sonic Gunman Locator” below. (And yeah, I know the thing came out in 2004. But the Times didn’t feel like quibbling over details.) Let me know if you guys want to see the full texts of the other ones.
The bombs get all the headlines, but gunfire is also a constant threat to American troops in Iraq. Between the shattered buildings, the rubble piles, the swirling dust storms and the roaring Humvees, shooters can be very hard to find. The Pentagon’s response: start equipping Humvees with technology that can automatically pinpoint where the shots are coming from.
One system, known as Boomerang, uses a bundle of seven microphones, each facing a different direction, mounted on top of an 18-inch pole. (Imagine a giant bouquet, with all the flower petals gone.) When a bullet flies by, creating a shock wave, each microphone picks up the sound at a slightly different time. Those tiny differences allow the system to calculate where the shooter is. (Boomerang also listens for the blast from the gun’s muzzle, which reaches the system just after the bullet’s faster-than-sound flight.) Inside the Humvee, a recorded voice buzzes through a dashboard speaker, announcing the shooter’s position — “Shot 10 o’clock! Shot 10 o’clock!” — and an analog clocklike display indicates the direction. Other information, like the shooter’s G.P.S. coordinates, range and elevation, are also provided. “We’re now accurate way beyond 500 meters,” says Dave Schmitt, Boomerang’s program manager at BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Mass.
The Army has 25 Boomerangs in Iraq right now, and the Marines are readying an equal number for their next rotation of troops. Schmitt sees a domestic market for the devices, as well. Already, Chicago is coupling gunshot detectors to security cameras, which are hung in some of the citys toughest neighborhoods. The idea is that when shots are heard, the camera will automatically turn in the direction of the gunfire — giving police and ambulance dispatchers a glimpse of the scene before cops or EMTs are sent out. G.I.s wont get that kind of advance warning, of course. But theyll settle for a little information, just after the fact.
Answer to the “Name this thing”: The Rock
Hahaha, I liked the Microblindness one:
“But what psychology researchers at Yale and Vanderbilt Universities have discovered is that erotic — and violent — images are so distracting that they make people temporarily blind.“
That sucks, as I’m constantly watching viloent movies (e.g. Saving Private Ryan), and even if it is for half a second, it eventually adds up.
The gunshot locater will be effective for about 24 hours. The gunshot detector presumably detects gunshots that miss as well, no? Gunshots pointed at other vehicles in the convoy? Gunshots pointed straight up in the air? Gunshots from subsonic rounds (like the .45)? Obviously, then, a blank round or a squib will generate an alarm.
A circle of squibs around the target vehicle can be used to induce panic in the crew or simply to conceal the true location of the weapon. Similarly, Chicago’s finest criminals will pop off a squib to get the cameras to turn away from their intended crime. If I can figure this out within thirty seconds of reading the article, imagine what the insurgents could do with all day to think about it.
James, it works off of the time delays of the sound, so it does not matter in what direction the shot was fired as long as the sound reaches the microphone array. As for circling the convoy and letting off blanks, untill the stuff hits the fan (i.e. hundreds of rounds start flying from all directions) the locators will give the locations of all shooters and that will be a hell of a lot better than using just one’s ear. (Besides, ask yourself if you would like to face off with marines armed with blanks.) And some speculation on my part, wouldn;t that suggest that the shooters will be working in groups instead of as a lone wolf, which should make it easier to catch someone even if the person you get was the one firing the blanks.
A squib or blanks don’t work against these systems. They are looking for not only the sound of the shot itself but the sound of the round moving through the air. If there is no round moving though the air then the system will assume that it was only a sound that sounded like a gun shot.
And even if this did work, you might be able to make the system in Chicago look away (Although according to some people I have talked to it works great and they don’t ever get false alarms) in Iraq I think the bad-guys are going to be hard pressed to come up with a good system for fooling them without wasting huge amounts of time and energy (I mean if you can make squips go off all around the truck why not just set off a few bombs?)
Now having said all that, I am not sure the effect on sub-sonic rounds. I just haven’t seen anything on that.
Boomerang detects supersonic shock waves generated by the bullet, therefore, it is not susceptible to ‘spoofing’ from ‘blanks’, firecrackers, car backfire or other similar ‘noises’. It will NOT detect subsonic rounds which generate a muzzle blast (i.e. loud noise). This was intentional in order to develop a system that did not false alert when operating in the high noise environment of a HMMWV driving at tactical speeds through urban areas. It is also designed to ignore ‘return fire’ . It is the lowest cost system of it’s type on the market. It will save lives.
How would a claymore like weapon, with multiple rounds sent from the blast location be detected by the boomerang? For example, a claymore or similar weapon is detonated anywhere around a convoy, when the soldiers react, possibly exiting the vehicles they will be subjuect to sniper fire. I am not saying this will or could happen, I am just looking into the possibilities.
Is thiis system able to calculate position from the sound of the bullet alone? If a sniper were inside a building, where the muzzle blast would be more diffucult to pick up, would it still be able to tell where the shooter is?
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