Tracking Point has done it again... this time with an AR-15.  As some of you may remember, this company produced a bolt action rifle (which subsequently made a 2.1 mile shot with a .338 Lapua), that integrates a laser rangefinder, scope, and computerized trigger that all work together to significantly enhance its precision.  Now they're making the same thing in 5.56 and 7.62 in the AR form factor.

Manufacturer's link

Pretty neat. With computing power becoming so cheap I think we will start to see a lot of stripped, purpose built Linux applications.

We can see where the technology is going. But I don't think it is a realistic choice for a weapon intended to be used in combat.

There's a GNU library that does ballistic computation (and does it fairly well) -- the rest is integration.

Cool but at what point is the person no longer doing the shooting?

 

All the hardware involved is relatively cheap and readily available. It is a very simple, straightforward system. In the near future the size and cost of this will be comparable to current optics. Other than for redundancy, manual scope adjustments will be a thing of the past in the coming years.

 

No, they don't.

Not this model, not this year.  I wouldn't count it out for the next generation a year down the road.  Look at how far this one company has come in less than a year since they introduced their first model.

The coolest thing about this?

In '09 I posted a thread about one of my potential BSEE capstone project ideas. By "idea" I mean I already did the circuit design and ballistics calculations for half a dozen loads and the I/O for integrating it with a laser rangefinder, inclinometer, barometer, and temp sensor; for an automatic adjusting RIS mounted targeting computer.  What engineer worth a shit doesnt delve into a project to see if it's feasible or not?

One day my thread just got disappeared. Thought it was odd, but chalked it up to a site problem.

A month later a site sponsor introduced a much more limited, less capable, and more expensive version of what I was doing at SHOT show.

I cant remember if it was these guys or not. Not saying it is or isnt. All I remember is browsing the SHOT thread and the folks introducing the ghetto version of my project being a sponsor at the time. Just sharing my interesting, at least to me, arfcom conspiracy theory.

I ended up doing a project on tactile pattern recognition as "project demonstration" would have been an issue in a classroom environment.


Long story short, I'm glad someone is taking this further.

Fire control systems have made warships, tanks, etc. progressively more lethal. It's about time the same evolution occurs in the infantryman.

Someone needs to get some Oculus integration going for this.

We plan on putting an ar15 on an industrial robot.  When the atf was in for my ffl interview he leaned toward it not being considered a MG (computer fired trigger).  I went ahead and got the class 2 mfg stamp anyway.

I've never been able to find anything, anywhere, that says a "computer fired trigger" is a machine gun.  It's an urban legend.

How long does it take your scope to boot up after it locks up and has to be powered off?

If they're smart, it doesn't do that.  I'd have definitely picked something more like QNX or one of the BSDs for it though -- Linux is not well known for its great performance as an RTOS.