| Ensign | 21 Nov 2008 4:45 a.m. PST |
link Want one Impressed that it can be fired by a grenade launcher! |
Formerly Regiment Games  | 21 Nov 2008 7:27 a.m. PST |
Wow. That is sort of like the concept I had for how Ogres see, many years ago. The tower (though neat looking) would be a tempting target. I imagined they had camera launchers and would shoot cameras up from armored apertures as needed. They would float down slowly on a chute, kind of like flares, keeping the Ogre updated on all units in the area. When the camera got too low or got shot down, up goes another. Of course, the Ogres would be kept informed with real time high altitude or satellite pix as well. |
| cloudcaptain | 21 Nov 2008 8:43 a.m. PST |
This is very similar to what they had in a Future Weapons episode…fired from a new multi-chambered grenade launcher. Can't recall the title of that one but its worth seeing and is right along these lines. |
| jpattern2 | 21 Nov 2008 9:37 a.m. PST |
Seems like police and even firefighters could use that, too. |
| Ensign | 21 Nov 2008 10:25 a.m. PST |
I presume they are re-usable as well.. If they make them small enough they could make them into golf balls, you'd never lose one.. or cricket ball, football…. |
| Lentulus | 21 Nov 2008 12:15 p.m. PST |
"or cricket ball, football" The first network to get an exclusinve license on that technology would have a field day. |
| Jovian1 | 21 Nov 2008 4:12 p.m. PST |
Good grief – I can see it now the "cricket ball cam" or the "football cam" view being played over and over again on TV – I can only imagine the nausea I would get having to view THAT!!! Can you imagine the spinning of the camera, the distortion by the fisheye lens, and the motion going on all round it?!? It would be worse than the current "helmet cams" found in the American NFL football games! Can you see the new "tennis ball cam" – being served at the opponent at 140mph? The baseball cam – as A-Rod smashes a homerun or the throw to first base on the short chopper to the shortstop? Watching sports would become less fun by an exponentially increasing number as Madden replays the dang thing over and over and over – getting you progressively sicker with every viewing! |
| Ensign | 21 Nov 2008 5:37 p.m. PST |
Except that the software gets rid of the fisheye and tumbling motion, so the picture would be smooth "Inside the sphere are image sensors and two fish-eye lenses. The data is then sent back and remapped through a type of processor known as a Field Programmable Gate Array which compensates for spin and tumble and then displays a true 360 image in real time. " |
 Condotta  | 21 Nov 2008 7:48 p.m. PST |
Wonder how the enemy would counter these? Blast them, smoke, mirrors, or even decoys or other misdirections…make the technology work against those deploying it. How would you counter these if deployed against you? |
| Cerdic | 22 Nov 2008 3:03 a.m. PST |
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| Inari7 | 22 Nov 2008 7:53 a.m. PST |
I imagine that if you were a bad guy and somthing was chucked in the window you would not hang around to check and see if it's a camera or a gernade. I would run for cover. ………………..Doug |
| Lion in the Stars | 25 Nov 2008 1:09 p.m. PST |
If it's like a parachute flare, use smoke. Alternatively, there's a toy that DARPA has been playing with: battlefield laser as a mortar-shell interceptor. Anything that goes up gets cooked to the tune of 5 megawatts or so (estimate, since it takes ~2 seconds to pop a 81mm mortar shell). With the stupidly cheap cost of frequency-agile transmitters, I don't think hacking the image is a possibility in a battlefield timescale. If it comes thru the window, I'm not sticking around to see if it goes boom, lets off smoke, or does nothing. |
