Shot Stopper: Smart Guns Get Smarter

Snowden · 04-22-2007, 21:34

Maybe this will be of some help in the future, at least for stolen guns.

Shot Stopper: Smart Guns Get Smarter

By Robin Lloyd
LiveScience Senior Editor
posted: 20 April 2007
02:39 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."

A 2006 version of the gun that relies on a Dynamic Grip Recognition system to prevent it from being fired by an unauthorized shooter. Credit: NJIT

> Click to View

An interior look at the sensors and circuitry inside the Dynamic Grip Recognition smart gun. Credit: NJIT

> Click to View

LiveScience.com - Shot Stopper: Smart Guns Get Smarter

Shooterman · 04-22-2007, 21:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snowden

Maybe this will be of some help in the future, at least for stolen guns.

Shot Stopper: Smart Guns Get Smarter

By Robin Lloyd
LiveScience Senior Editor
posted: 20 April 2007
02:39 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."

A 2006 version of the gun that relies on a Dynamic Grip Recognition system to prevent it from being fired by an unauthorized shooter. Credit: NJIT

> Click to View

An interior look at the sensors and circuitry inside the Dynamic Grip Recognition smart gun. Credit: NJIT

> Click to View

LiveScience.com - Shot Stopper: Smart Guns Get Smarter

So a cop loses his weapon in a firefight, picks up his partners, who has gone down, and attempts to fire it. Wuh-woh., he thinks, I'm dead now". So a cops firearm gets immersed in water. What happens to the circuitry? So, the odds against it dfailing are only 1 1/100th of a percent. A cop or soldier wants to place his life on the reliability. Sure they will.

Snowden · 04-22-2007, 22:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shooterman

So a cop loses his weapon in a firefight, picks up his partners, who has gone down, and attempts to fire it. Wuh-woh., he thinks, I'm dead now". So a cops firearm gets immersed in water. What happens to the circuitry? So, the odds against it dfailing are only 1 1/100th of a percent. A cop or soldier wants to place his life on the reliability. Sure they will.

Whoa!! Shooterman, it took you less than a split second to see the rather awful weakness to this gun. I hope police departments and our military will never use this weapon if it is perfected!

You never cease to amaze me, Shooterman! "Just because you can do something," as my husband says, "doesn't mean you should do it."

jjvman · 04-23-2007, 07:31

My thoughts also. Now allowing for cultural differences, in the WW's I and II, with this technology, the enemy could have picked up fallen guns and maybe used 1/100th % of them against us. Not perfect, but a lot better (how about today's terrorists and rebel guerillas) than using 100% of our weapoins from fallen soldiers(or VC in overrun positions)? It is an improvement.

Snowden · 04-23-2007, 08:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjvman

My thoughts also. Now allowing for cultural differences, in the WW's I and II, with this technology, the enemy could have picked up fallen guns and maybe used 1/100th % of them against us. Not perfect, but a lot better (how about today's terrorists and rebel guerillas) than using 100% of our weapoins from fallen soldiers(or VC in overrun positions)? It is an improvement.

Those are valid points too.

Well, it wouldn't have helped with the man in Va Tech, but Columbine might have been avoided with these safety guards, unless the grandson had been 'approved.'

herbstin · 04-23-2007, 08:47

What about EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse)? Using such technology in military or public service could be a disaster should a natural or man-made EMP hit. Also, what do you think the odds would be that, if this technology is placed in wide-spread civilian use, the gov't will have a disabler code or device inserted to disarm the populace? It would be easy to get it adopted, all it would take would be one nutjob shooting up anything. The loonie left would start howling: "If only his guns could have been disabled!", and the politickians would immediately pass legislation mandating such a system "For the children." It wouldn't be long before they would want all older firearms retrofitted with such systems, or destroyed "For the public good." I think you can see the spiral here.

Power corrupts.