Pyrian on 6/10/2022 at 00:05
Ah. An open-source AI-aimed lethal laser turret. No way that goes wrong. :cheeky: They don't yet look like the SS2 turrets, but give it time!
Azaran on 6/10/2022 at 21:34
(
https://www.odditycentral.com/news/uk-based-company-creates-functional-invisibility-shields.html)
Quote:
Inspired by Harry Potter's iconic invisibility cloak, these real-life invisibility shields can make anyone who hides behind them disappear into thin air.
Invisibility Shield Co. is a UK-based startup that has been working on an affordable invisibility mechanism for over two years. The company recently revealed a line of invisibility shields that rely on surprisingly simple technology to make users invisible to the naked eye. Apparently, the shield uses a “precision-engineered lens array” to deflect light from the subject sitting behind the shield away from the observer. The lenses are oriented vertically to allow light from the subject to diffuse when it passes through the shield. The light from the subject's background is refracted towards the observer who cannot see the subject hiding behind the shield.
"From the observer's perspective, this background light is effectively smeared horizontally across the front face of the shield, over the area where the subject would ordinarily be seen,” the company shared.
The team behind the project reportedly tested a variety of lens shapes, angles, and depths, and ultimately settled on a variant that doesn't require toxic resins that are usually used in such designs. Also, the shield relies solely on optics, requiring no power source to produce its magic. Despite being just over two inches thick, the shield weighs only nine pounds, which makes it fairly portable.
Invisibility shields come in two sizes, the standard 3 x 2 feet, which can be yours for $394, and a smaller 12 x 8 inch version priced at $64, including international shipping.
According to the project's Kickstarter page, the invisibility shield works best when placed against uniform backgrounds such as foliage, grass, sand, and sky, but will also do the trick against buildings, rails or painted lines.
Invisibility Shield Co. emphasizes that while its creations will shield a user from view, they will not protect them against any sort of attack, as it is made from a flexible and non-rigid material used for external signages.
The UK-based startup claims to have already registered hundreds of pre-orders for its invisibility shield in a matter of days, and hopes to start deliveries by December of this year.
[video=youtube;2butkT8vb-E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2butkT8vb-E[/video]
Tocky on 7/10/2022 at 00:55
Wow. That is cool. It won't protect against an attack? Hell, just kevlar the other side, or your own body for that matter. Have a camera display on the users side and a whole army could encircle an enemy in broad daylight without being seen.
Pyrian on 7/10/2022 at 02:22
Well, as long as you're surrounding them in horizontally contiguous terrain, anyway.
Tocky on 7/10/2022 at 02:53
As long as they are bunched together and you approach in a circle you are golden... until they throw up their shields and nobody can find anybody. I want a house made out of this stuff.
Remember the suit in the latest Invisible Man movie? Getting closer to that all the time.
Cipheron on 10/10/2022 at 00:29
Hmm, that stuff is basically not much different to frosted glass, except it only scatters light along one axis. So one way to understand this material is that it's like polarized frosted glass.
Kinda neat, but I don't think that it's something you could leverage to get much more out of it.
demagogue on 10/10/2022 at 01:17
You might not be able to see the person, but you can still see the glass. So it'd be most useful on a rainy, misty, or foggy day when it's already hard to see the glass itself. Or if you had a giant wall of it, you might know some people are behind it, but not how many or where they are. I also think it'd be most useful in cases where people aren't shooting projectiles at it.
It might take a bit to think of what use case this would be most useful for. If you want to just hide people passing through it, you can already do that with a concrete wall too. Yeah, I guess coming into a place on a foggy day, where there's not a lot of tall grass (where they could just wear a grass suit and crawl in), it'd catch people by surprise.
Cipheron on 10/10/2022 at 09:48
Well not really. Consider that the trick only works against horizontal striped backgrounds, the wall section also needs to be exactly parallel to the background you want it on, but that also suggests that the *viewpoint* this works from also needs to be parallel. All the camera angles have been carefully crafted to make it work like that. For example, they move the panel left and right a little, but at no point do they actually rotate the panel. I have a feeling the actual usable angle of view isn't that great here. Think crappy LCD screens which are totally dark from the wrong angle.
Also saw this just now:
(
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/russia-robot-dog-weapon-rpg-b2146784.html)
Inline Image:
https://static.independent.co.uk/2022/08/17/12/robot%20dog%20rpg%20russia.jpgIt's a Russian robot dog with a rocket launcher on it from an arms expo. But people determined it's actually made from a Chinese toy robot dog costing £350, but the black cloth is apparently to hide the details.
I guess they could send these to fight in Ukraine and then Ukraine ends up with an army of robot dogs.
Cipheron on 2/8/2023 at 23:33
(
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-08-03/virtual-fences-cow-collars-tasmanian-dairy-farms/102675546)
Quote:
Each morning when Tasmanian farmer Duncan Macdonald wakes up and heads to the milking shed, his herd of dairy cows is already there and waiting.
It's a far cry from waking up at 3am, rounding them up in a paddock in the dark, and herding them for an hour.
His cows have been trained using "virtual fencing" collars — a new tool widely used already in New Zealand, but yet to take hold in Australia.
What is virtual fencing?
Virtual fencing is a system that uses smart collars to herd and monitor cattle.
Each animal is given an electric collar that emits sound and vibration cues to tell them where to go, and then zaps them if they ignore the cue.Controlled by a smartphone app, it gives dairy farmers the ability to remotely move their cows to the milking shed, set up temporary paddocks and monitor cow health — all without setting a foot outside.
Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture senior researcher Dr Megan Verdon has been studying virtual fencing since 2016.
She said the race to introduce the technology has been ticking since its initial conception in the 1980s, followed by a further boost in the early 2000s when the CSIRO commissioned research and development in the area.
New Zealand tech startup Halter has become the first company in the country to offer it commercially.
It took its first quiet steps into Australia via Tasmania last year,
offering subscriptions starting at $8.50 per month, per cow.Oh god, it's a cow-electrocuting subscription service.
