Firearm Aiming Control Using a Safety Line for Less-Lethal Shots
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems for less lethal ammunition in crowd control require significant computing power, making them impractical for handheld firearms, and there is a need for a system that can adapt to target movement and ensure safe shooting without specific body part identification.
Innovation Solution
A system using an image sensor, processor, and display to define a safety line and aiming regions below it, controlling firearm discharge to ensure impacts occur within these regions, even without identifying specific body parts, and adapting to target movement.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If object recognition techniques including artificial intelligence and pose estimation are used to identify body parts, then the ability to restrict firing to non-critical areas is improved, but the computing power requirement becomes too high for handheld firearms
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the target area into distinct zones using a safety line that separates the scene into a first region (above the line) and a second region (below the line). This segmentation allows the system to restrict firing to the safe second region without requiring complex body part identification, thereby reducing computing power requirements while maintaining reliability in preventing critical area impacts.
Solution Approach 2:
The system extracts only the essential information needed for safe firing - the position of the safety line and whether the target lies within the permitted second region. By taking out only this critical spatial information rather than performing full body part recognition, the system achieves reliable fire restriction with minimal computing resources.
2Power
If a safety line system is used to restrict firing regions, then the computing power requirement is reduced, but the system must still adapt to target movement and changing circumstances
Solution Approach 1:
The safety line and associated firing restrictions are dynamically adjusted based on real-time target detection and tracking. The system continuously updates the position of the safety line and determines whether the target remains within the permitted second region, allowing adaptation to target movement without requiring excessive computing power through simple geometric calculations rather than complex AI re-evaluation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system employs feedback mechanisms by continuously monitoring the target's position relative to the safety line and adjusting fire permission accordingly. When the target moves such that it no longer lies within the second region below the safety line, the system automatically restricts firing, providing real-time adaptation to changing circumstances with minimal computational overhead.
Data Source
AI summary
A system for restricting a firearm to less lethal shooting includes an image sensor, at least one non-transitory memory storing instructions, and at least one processor that executes the instructions to cause the performance of the following steps: processing images to detect potential targets within a scene; locking onto and tracking at least one of the potential targets; defining a safety line relative to the scene; defining one or more aiming regions on the at least one locked-on target below the safety line; and controlling discharge of the firearm, so as to permit discharge of the firearm when a projectile discharged from the firearm will impact the scene or the target at one of the defined aiming regions, and to prevent discharge of the firearm when a projectile discharged from the firearm will impact the scene or target outside one of the aiming regions.