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Comments on TrackingPoint Smart Rifle
Not your typical 'smart bullet' approach. (Read
the complete story)
| "I'm not sure I'd want a gun that won't fire when I pull the trigger. Sounds like a major accident waiting to happen." (Dewtey 5/16/2013 4:06:25 AM) |
| "I know what you mean. I have a Camry hybrid car that uses sensors to determine how much traction the wheels have. When the road is slippery, this can result in a situation in which I push down on the accelerator pedal, but nothing happens. I like the car, but it's very frustrating and a little bit unnerving to have the car decide when to go forward." (Bill Christensen 5/16/2013 5:31:25 AM) |
| "While I know it's in many other spots, the oldest one I know of is in Timothy Zahn's Cobra series. They had implanted weaponry, sensors, and targeting computers, but it was all on the gun side. (since they were using energy weapons rather than projectile, mostly)
Another example is the "Smartlinks" and "Smartguns" in the Shadowrun RPG, which are pretty much exactly what this is describing, but are more recent than the Cobra reference." (Ashley 5/18/2013 8:52:58 AM) |
| "Ashley, thanks. I'll try finding it, but if you have a text reference that would be great." (Bill 5/18/2013 11:24:35 AM) |
| "The Cobra reference isn't perfect, since they use primarily energy weapons (lasers and sonics), and the setup deals with more than just aiming the guns. The Cobras have bone reinforcement, motors to boost strength, hearing/sight augmentation, etc, and it's all linked to a nanotech battle computers with pre-programmed "battle reflexes" to shortcut the normal training time. One of the things that was described in the books is that while they can tell the battle computer to do a sequence of actions, then let it take control (so they can do some of the more complex tricks, or have perfect timing with their teammates), they could also use it just to augment their own abilities. When using it that way, they were described as selecting a target so the computer would know what they wanted to shoot, and then they'd just have to wave their hand in that general direction and the computer would make the laser fire when it was actually pointed in the right direction. (so as to avoid always being locked into pre-programmed patterns and thus being too predictable)
In Shadowrun, the Smartlinks and Smartguns are a much more direct example of what this article is about, tho it's slightly newer than the Cobra series. References to it are available online, tho a quick search is only turning up the lesser versions of the things (higher cost/rarity for ones that go the whole nine yards):
http://kolidascope.wikia.com/wiki/Smartlink_%28Shadowrun%29
http://kolidascope.wikia.com/wiki/Smartlinked_%28Shadowrun%29" (Ashley 5/19/2013 1:07:55 PM) |
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