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You Can't Hide From DARPA
The Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Reconnaissance (HIBR) project is DARPA's way of saying that your days of hiding in your house or apartment building are just about over.
We've all seen versions of this idea presented in films; typically, it shows dots representing people moving through a floor plan that had been entered into the computer beforehand. DARPA wants to be able to fully visualize the interior structure of a building without any architectural plan data.
In the 1996 movie Eraser, the sight on the gun was able to see right through the building, visualizing walls and major appliances, to pick up the heartbeat (actually, the whole heart!) of the target.
DARPA is developing broad and diverse technologies necessary for external sensing deep inside buildings with the objective of providing a suite of sensing technologies for situational awareness both above- and below-ground suitable across a broad range of building environments. The component technologies must support all external ISR concepts of operations ranging from pre-mission planning through detailed assessment of targeted structures, and live updates during mission execution.
(Gun sight in Eraser movie visualizes heart of target)
Arnold Schwarzenegger probably speaks for DARPA in commenting on the movie:
"We paid a lot of attention to making the audience feel the danger of this weapon, that anyone can be outside of your house, looking right through the walls. It really leaves you nowhere to hide," he explains. "But, on top of that, we show the sophistication of the weapon in a lot of fun ways: you not only see through a building, you see a person's skeleton and even their heart beating inside. There are some great visual effects there...
See also articles on LifeReader (Senses The Enemy Through Walls) and Super-Resolution Vision System Super Sniper Scope. From Wired. Thanks to Moira for the tip on this story.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/24/2008)
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