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Bored and wanna build something fun?

N8 v2.0

Not the sharpest tool in the shed
Oct 18, 2002
11,003
149
The Cleft of Venus


The idea of this project was to create a fully-automated sentry gun, capable of picking out a human target and accurately tracking and shooting him or her in the heart. Really, the idea was to find a cool robotics project for the summer while I was working at an advertising agency, and I'd only ever seen sentry guns in movies (like Congo) and video games (Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress Classic). I couldn't find any record of anyone building one, even the military, although it seems likely I just didn't look hard enough. It's a pretty simple technology. One of my friends did mention the Phalanx anti-missile gun, which is of similar design, but uses radar for tracking instead of an optical method. The Phalanx has been around since the early 80's. He was also quick to add that there are some pretty good reasons for not building an optical sentry gun, a big one being that it's generally a good idea to shoot down any missile headed in your direction, but that same philosophy may not be the best when applied to humans. If you're here just to see my little brother get shot with it, scroll to the bottom. :) I'm sorry this webpage sucks, it will get better with time.
Link: http://cs-people.bu.edu/aaron/turret/turret.htm
 

Westy

the teste
Nov 22, 2002
54,232
20,015
Sleazattle
N8 is just trolling.

A basic vision system may not have been used for shooting people but are used in industrial robotic applications all the time.

The same set up could be used to guide a large gun and placed in the flight path near a major airport to shoot down airplanes.
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
a gun that you can build and it automatically tracks a target and shoots them...if I scanned it correctly while wasting that 30 secs of my life i'll never get back.