Brainstorm - February 26, 2018
Shifting our focus towards Military Applications
During the design process, we underwent multiple stages of restating the problem to be solved, as well as changing the solution to the problem. First we began with a broad scope, trying to solve three main problems:
- Firefighters don't always know if someone is in the building, and may spend time searching for someone in the wrong place
- SWAT Teams entering a building do not know how many people are in a room before entering
- Soldiers clearing out a building in urban warfare settings may not always know how many people are in a room, and if they are armed
We narrowed our approached down to solving Problems 2 and 3, as we felt that narrowing our scope would help to create a better product. Firefighter gear must be extremely rugged to withstand high heat, whereas military equipment does not; trying to compromise between firefighters and military would place too many restrictions on the design.
Alternative Design Approaches for Military Applications
One solution is to identify not only people, but also weapons that may be in the room.
The presence of weapons in a room almost always indicates that hostile combatants are within that room; detecting rifles, long guns, and pistols would give the US soldier a clear indication that the people within the room are hostile. This would better allow the soldier to act appropriately without compromising himself or his team.
- Identifying Weapons in Room
- Using Sonar
- Rifle and pistol barrels, being long cylindrical tubes with a closed and open end, form resonators which may oscillate at particular ultrasound frequencies. An ultrasonic transducer mounted on the soldier's pack can be used to stimulate oscillations in the combatant's gun barrels which are "silent" (above human hearing range) and can be detected.
- Using electrical resonance of rifle barrel
- The barrel of a rifle effectively forms an electrical radio antenna. A radio transmitter on the soldier's pack can transmit a sweep output across the resonant range of most rifle barrels, and this oscillation can be detected, which would indicate the presence of a metal object with the dimensions typical of a rifle barrel.