Posted: 5/5/2007 1:04:22 AM EDT
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Found this on another board Shot Stopper: Smart Guns Get Smarter Robin Lloyd LiveScience Senior Editor LiveScience.com Fri Apr 20, 4:22 PM ET Police in New Jersey are testing smart guns that rely on biometric sensors in the grip to prevent weapons from firing if they detect that the trigger squeezer is not authorized to shoot them. The handguns fire only when their internal circuitry and software recognizes the grip "profile" of an authorized shooter—that is, the particular way an individual holds a gun as it is about to fire based on the shooter's hand musculature, strength, bone structure and hand-brain communication habits. The new technology, which works on semi-automatic handguns—typical police-issue weapons as well as the handgun of choice among most homeowners, would prevent the use of a gun by a child or someone who stole the gun, however, it would do nothing to thwart the misuse of a gun by the adult and legal owner, as occurred earlier this week at Virginia Tech when a student killed 32 people and himself during a morning rampage. "The technology would have allowed him to fire it, which is not something we wanted to see," said project director Donald Sebastian of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "Our Dynamic Grip Recognition technology is not designed to see if you have criminal intent." In the aftermath of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, experts are discussing whether prevention of similar events in the future could come from stiffer gun laws, stronger oversight of troubled youths and faster notification of campus and other communities when police become aware of a violent crime. Meanwhile, the NJIT smart gun is now 98 to 99 percent accurate at recognizing authorized shooters, up from 90 percent a couple years ago. The goal is 99.99 percent accuracy before the gun would be manufactured and sold commercially, Sebastian said. The gun is tested weekly by a group of university police at a local firing range and put through its paces under different firing conditions such as right-hand versus left-hand shooting, shooting from a kneeled position and shooting from behind a partition at a target. A grip on the problem Initially, the New Jersey State Legislature authorized Sebastian in 1999 to investigate what could and could not be done to make a safer handgun. A breakthrough came when Sebastian's colleague Michael Recce said that the biometrics of handwriting analysis on touch pads was based on pressure over time, not the shapes of the letters. "We made the mental leap that the way we grab things, like a tennis racket or a golf club, is a reflexive thing, a trained thing, that is reproducible," he said. The project then created a database of grip profiles based on hundreds of subjects, each one generating effectively a short movie, not a snapshot, of information about how each one holds a gun while pulling the trigger. With gun grips, individuals generate a gripping pattern that evolves within the first tenth of a second of a trigger pull, Sebastian said, faster than human reaction speed. "What is unique for each individual is the coordinated act of how you apply leverage to pull the trigger back," he said. Triggered response Within that tenth of a second, the electronic circuitry in the gun also is fast enough to prevent the gun from firing if the grip profile fails to match that of an authorized user profile stored in the gun's circuitry. For a conventional gun, any displacement of any of the chain of pre-firing events that must unfold across a collection of pins, springs and levers inside the gun will stop it from firing. In an electronic gun, the shot can be prevented by interrupting the zap of electricity that touches off the primer in the cartridge. Other ideas for gun safety in the past 10 years have included PIN numbers and radio-frequency identification tags on guns and operators, but these can be stolen. These might work in professional settings, Sebastian said, "but biometrics is better for the home." |
- even fucked up on <cough> drugs </cough> and alcohol.
I would never purchase a Biometric gun. Heck, a 99% success rate of recognizing a user's biometrics and allowing them to shoot the gun is 1% too little. There's enough to worry about with a gun's possible mechanical malfunctions without worrying about your grip being off and the gun not firing for you during a life or death situation. What if I was the victim of a home invasion, managed to get to my gun, but was shot or beat with a bat in the process? I may not have all the strength or normal grip characteristic that the gun would recognize for me, and even if I lined up the perfect shot against my assailant the gun wouldn't work. Some people may say how unlikely it is, but I'd rather worry about it now than later if it ever happens. I believe the saying is "Failure to plan is planning to fail". |
I agree GI and you didnt mention the part about the brain to hand communication signals. I wonder how a high stress situation would effect the device? |
I wonder when they will deem 99% an "acceptable" failure rate, introduce a few handguns, and activate the 2002 law? Better stock up on Pre "Under the New Jersey law, the technology will be required in all new handguns sold three years after the state attorney general determines a smart gun prototype is safe and commercially available. Weapons used by law enforcement officers would be exempt" link |
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"Under the New Jersey law, the technology will be required in all new handguns sold three years after the state attorney general determines a smart gun prototype is safe and commercially available. Weapons used by law enforcement officers would be exempt" Yea and if i was living in NJ the frist thing i would be demanding is to make all law enforecement agencies the first ones to adopt this crap (technology) and after a couple of people on the job are killed due to not working and maybe a couple of lawsuits to the dumb asses who voted yes for using it. Maybe than the peoples republic of NJ will wake up Not!!! |
