Smartphone app ‘can locate active terrorists’ in half a SECOND – just by listening to a single gunshot
A HIGH-TECH military headset that automatically picks out terrorists in under a second could save lives on battlefields of the future.
The gear measures shock waves triggered by incoming gunfire and then calculates the position of the shooter using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence.
Their location is then pinged to nearby soldiers’ smartphones, allowing them to quickly return fire.
Experts behind the tech say it will help soldiers respond rapidly to ambushes, where the location of incoming gunfire is often tricky to work out.
“At the beginning of an ambush, the most important thing for soldiers is to know where the shooting is coming from so that they can hide on the right side of a vehicle or at least aim in the right direction,” said Dr Sébastien Hengy, a scientist at the French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis, France.
“They need this information very fast.”
The tool is made up of a pair of soundproof earmuffs with four built-in microphones.
It relies on the fact that most modern guns fire bullets at supersonic speeds, creating two sound waves.
The first is a supersonic shock wave that travels in front of the bullet and spreads outward in a cone shape. The explosion of the bullet in the barrel creates a second wave which radiates from the muzzle in all directions.
The headphones work out where bullets have come from in real-time by recording the time difference between waves as they reach the left and right ears.
This information is sent via Bluetooth or USB to a soldier’s smartphone, which uses an algorithm to calculate the shooter’s position.
“If it’s a smartphone with a good processor, the computation time to get the complete trajectory is about half a second,” said Dr Hengy.
He added that once soldiers begin to return fire, the location tracking software turns off.
Soldiers in France’s Operation Sentinel domestic anti-terror force are already equipped with smartphones.
Later this year Dr Hengy will begin tests with his system on an artificial head. He reckons the technology will be deployed as early as 2021.
Dr Hengy is presenting his research this week at the 177th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Louisville, Kentucky.
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