Here’s your cool gadget of the week: a video camera that can follow speeding bullets midflight. I took a look at the gizmo, built by Nova Sensors Inc for the Air Force Research Laboratory, for Wired News. I’ve examined Nova’s goods before. But this is the first time it’s ability to mimic the Matrix’s bullet time sequences has been revealed.
The first videos — which you can see via the Wired story — are crude. But it’s an impressive capability. Existing sniper-finding systems rely on radar or acoustic sensors. And they can be heavy, bulky, and are one more piece of kit to carry. Nova Sensors device (known as VAST) can be integrated into a thermal imager, devices which are small enough for personal use.
Effectively, it could turn every round into a tracer bullet. Anyone firing at you would give themselves away immediately, even if the muzzle flash is hidden. From Nova President Mark Massies comments on the sensor, it sounds as though different types of rounds may have very different signatures, so enhanced software would not only be able to pinpoint the source of a shot, it could say what type of weapon is being fired. A system that tells you that two AK-47s and one AK-74 are firing from the upper story of Building A? Sounds pretty useful.
Interestingly, right at the moment a new evaluation is being carried out using ShotSpotter acoustic sniper location system in conjunction with Boeing’s ScanEagle UAVs. The idea is that the ShotSpotter indicates the location and Scan Eagle goes over to get a better look. A ScanEagle equipped with the VAST camera system would be a logical extension of this idea.
(The bad guys could try to get around it by using bullets cast from ice when they are sniping, an approach only used so far in bad thrillers as far as I know. It’s possible; it gives terrible ballistics and very limited lethality, but the bullets could not be tracked by the VAST system. Or at least, not until Massie’s team spend five minutes on the software and get it to pick out cold objects against the warm background as well as hot ones.)
If only Zapruder had had one of these, we would be able to see exactly how many bullets were fired at Kennedy and from what direction…
There are likely to be a lot of other applications which are more prosaic than following bullets in flight. But as a first demonstration, its pretty impressive.
– David Hambling
New Camera Sees In Bullet Time
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
I think the Mith Busters probed ice bullets impossible. lol.
haha…^
I was just about to post that when I saw yours.
Maybe…but Myth Busters’ budget is probably not as large as potential enemies that might actually research that…
This is an amazing technology, though. Can’t wait to see it in implementable form.
You don’t do ICE bullets, you do CHILLED bullets. Just enough to compensate for the heat added.
But such a PITA to do right that its not an effective countermeasure.
“at least, not until Massie’s team spend five minutes on the software and get it to pick out cold objects against the warm background ”
Groan– that’s as easy as projecting a black spot on a well lit white wall or using a flash to photgraph fireworks at night
Chilled bullets wouldn’t do it; as the article mentions the surface heats up to 500 degrees.
What you need is an ice bullet (or frozen something – mercury, perhaps) which has a surface which will ablate without reaching high temperature. Ice bullets by definition do not heat up much…
Russell – why would detecting a dark spot against a light background be such a challenge? It’s only a problem if the bullet is matched to the temperature of the background.
Spend five minutes on the software to do what exactly? The camera tracks with radar and sound, not the light spectrum. Same difference between snakes and bats. If there isnt already thermal sensing hardware included with this device, its gonna take quite longer than 5min to see that frozen bullet.
How well might this work against a Sabot round with only one shot?
This would be an interesting experiment. Camera crew in a training area knowing where the target is and that there is one single person who is to take one shot only somewhere in the area. Depending on the size of the training area the shooter may not need to be in the exact same area.
Its BEAUTIFUL technology and worth utilizing when hunting for snipers (of all kinds). This technology has incredible and numerous applications as long as it is protected by TRUSTWORTHY individuals!?!?!?!? Don’t let this technology get buried under BEAURATIC RED TAPE!!!!
The comment re the Zapruder film is intriguing. The bullets fired at Kennedy are on the film. Can this new techology be adapted somehow to examine older film (such as Zapruder)to reveal the bullets?
Ice bullets?
The bullets I shoot are given quite a number of g’s shock loading upon launch which seems to me would at least create cracks in the ice and cause it to turn to sleet within a very short range
Ice bullets – no way, the heat of the burning gasses would vaporize the liquid – Mythbusters was right. The delta between remaining ice / energy transfer is too great.
IR usually works based on the difference in heat, often .25 deg C, so chilling the bullet exactly the right amount to remain at background might not be feasible. This looks like very powerful technology.
Ice Bullets?
I guess you missed that episode of Myth Busters.
George’s comment about the Zapruder film containing bullets is probably accurate, but the film would only contan the image of the bullets, not the heat signatures so Im going to say that the JFK cover-up is still safe.
With reference to the Zapruder film the bullets are not able to be seen. Photographic film depends on granules of chemicals (silver nitrite) and has a grainy appearance at high magnification. A bullet against the background in the film would be smaller than the grain of the film and so is invisible. Not to mention the inablity of standard film to capture an image of an object moving at a 1000 fps.
Video is passive and requires some detection scheme to determine that an object is traveling through the “videospace.” Traditionally and wrt physics, active detectors which transmit and collect returns have been the most effective sensors. There is in development, a LIDAR sniper detector which will do the same job- or nearly the same job. The optimum would probably be to combine both systems to provide multi-spectral redundancy, take advantage of existing algorithms already developed or in development for each spectrum. One sensor type is not going to meet the
requirements for certainty and speed of detection.
LAW: “The camera tracks with radar and sound”
NO – it tracks using the infrared image. It does not use radar or sound like previous systems.
The ice bullets comment was flippant, but I suspect it could be done if approached correctly. You can’t simply use a bullet-shaped mould: the ice crystals have to be structured correctly for the forces involved.
Even a saboted round heats up significantly: travelling at sea level at mach 4 is going to create a lot of friction heating.
Lidar is nice, but this has the advantage that it’s not an extra (expensive) piece of kit, it can be integrated into night vision systems.
Hollow tipped bullets aside, rifle bullets do not heat up in flight to any degree significant enough to make them more visible to IR cameras.
Hollow tipped bullets aside, rifle bullets do not heat up in flight to any degree significant enough to make them more visible to IR cameras.
Mythbusters this blog letter isnt aboiut the bullet but as a high pethetical question say I was building a project,a robot or carn,And this project was away to understand humans as a caculated machine and the corospondent with human enivation.
Lets say this summary is only used to points that you were asinged based off the combonation of body syle fetures and the x nuber of human behavers.SO from this combonations of stuctures of energy combonations and body style combos.This project combonation depict what force of energy combonation the robot or car will have ,these fetures define your cars performanceSay a feture that I’ve had sense birth was the foundation for a feture that I want proformed.
LIke the preforming of the creation of man that feture would be upgraded to my structure and based on the phisical proportys ,not to mention the mathmatics along with it.The foundation of this stuctured system would show the.And im notin debt based on this number 1 project.
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Lewis kam auf das Stadium auf dem folgenden Dean Martin complete und Martin sang vom hinteren.