The DREAD Weapon System

DREAD System

It would be less scary if it didn’t look like a mash up of a disk gun and the starship Enterprise.

No heat, no recoil, no sound, no gunpowder, no flash — just 120,000 rounds per minute of pulverizing power. The next generation of weapons systems has arrived: the DREAD centrifuge-powered weapon system.

SoldierTech: The DREAD Weapon System

DREAD Weapon System promotional video (19MB on a slow link)

More info and photos!

(thank you Steve, please don’t try to build one, but if you do, send video! 🙂 )
military, weapons, gun, DREAD

LaserMAME

LaserMAME

W00t! These guys used a killer laser galvo system to play MAME arcade games not on your VGA monitor, not on your TV, but on your wall! Apparently there is an add on to the regular MAME32 that will output vector values for use with vector monitors. As I guess vector monitors were in short supply they used lasers. The laser control system was not scratch built (darn!) and they didn’t build the lasers either (crap!) so to do this yourself I’d guess that your going to have to spend some bucks. But hey, the final result is oh soooo sweeet!

LaserMAME – Vector games played in a new Light

lasers, mame, computer games

It Will Suck The Iron Out of Your Blood

BIG Magnet

Ok, it can’t suck the iron out of your blood, but it could kill you in a number of facinating ways.

Scroll down to the bottom of the linked page…

It’s $100. I think just looking at the photo might have demagnetized my credit cards.
-Greg

Computers & monitors will be affected in an entire room. Loose metallic objects and other magnets may become airborne and fly considerable distances – and at great speed – to attach themselves to this magnet. If you get caught in between the two, you can get injured.
We can only ship this magnet by ground UPS – it cannot be shipped via air as it will interfere with the navigational equipment an the aircraft.

United Nuclear – Neodymium magnets

The Speedy Way to Capture a City

City Mapping

Of course the best use of this technology would be to make CounterStrike game map

-Greg

The concept is similar to building a virtual reality model, but the process is very different. To produce a VR model, a programmer manually combines distance measurements and 2D pictures to make a 3D model. The new technique, dubbed “virtualised reality” by creator Avideh Zakhor, is automated and much faster. “Right now, a detailed urban model can take many months to create,” says Bruce Deal, vice-president of the Virginia engineering firm SET Associates, which is helping to adapt the technology for the US military. “With the new model, we’re talking about an hour or so.” Virtualised reality scans the urban landscape using lasers and digital cameras mounted on a truck or plane. A laser measures distances to objects such as lamp posts and building facades, while the digital camera takes 2D photos. Another laser calculates the movement of the truck and checks its position against data collected from the aerial laser aboard the plane.
These measurements and pictures are fed into a computer that combines them to create a photo-realistic virtual 3D model of the area. Zakhor and her team recently created a working model of downtown Berkeley (see graphic) in just 4? hours – 26 minutes of driving plus 4 hours of data processing.

The speedy way to capture a city
3D, maps, virtual