Subscribe via RSS

Archives by Date
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008

See all Archives
Archives by Category
'Canes
Afghan Update
Ammo and Munitions
Armor
Around the Globe
Av Week Extra
Axe in Iraq (and Elsewhere)
Bizarro
Blimps
Blog Bidness
Body Armor Blues
Bomb Squad
Brownshoes in Action
Bubbleheads, etc.
Cammo Green
Catch the "Buzz"
Chem-Bio
Civilian Apps
Cloak and Dagger
Commandos
Comms
Contingency Ops
Cops and Robbers
Cyber-warfare
Data Diving
Defense Tech Poll
Dissent Tech
Door Kickers
Drones
DT Administrivia
Eat DT's Dust
Extra! Extra!
Eye on China
Fast Movers
FCS Watch
Fire for Effect
FOS Files
Friday Funnies
Gadgets and Gear
Going Green
Grand Ole Osprey
Ground Vehicles
Guns
Homeland Security
In the Weeds with Eric
Info War
Iraq Diary
Jarhead Jazz
JSF Watch
Just War Theories
Lasers and Ray Guns
Less-lethal
Logistics
Los Alamos and Labs
M4 Monopoly
Medic!
Mercs
Missiles
Money Money Money
Most Wanted
MRAP Edge
Net-Centric
Nukes
Old Skool
Our Shrinking Planet
Planes, Copters, Blimps
Politricks
Polmar's Perspective
Popular Mechanics
Rapid Fire
Raptor Watch
Red Team
Retro-Futuro
Robots
Roll Your Own
Sabra Tech
Ships and Subs
Snipertech
Space
Special Ops
Star Wars
Strategery
Stray Trons
Tactical Development
Terror Tech
The Deadlies
The Defense Biz
The Peoples' Site
The Sunday Paper
The Tanker Tango
The View from Av Week
Those Nutty Norks
Training and Sims
Trimble on the Case
Video Lounge
War Update
Ward'z Wonderz
You can run...

See all Archives
Newsletters

Edited by Christian Lowe | Contact

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME SPYBALL?

eyeball.JPGEvil doers: if a soldier tosses what seems to be a rubber tennis ball into your secret hideaway, he does not want to play a set of doubles. He wants to spy on you.

An Israeli start-up has put together a spherical sensor, packed with 360-degree cameras and microphones, that can see and hear everything in a 25-meter radius, and send the pictures and sounds back to HQ.

The omni-directional images could give "field commanders... a front-row seat inside terrorist lairs," Defense News says. "If hostages are involved, rescuers may be able to communicate discreetly with captives via microphones and speakers implanted in the devices."

O.D.F. Optronics calls its orb -- surprise, surprise -- Eyeball. And prototypes of the little guy have already been ordered by the Pentagon and by Israeli forces.

spyball.JPG "All the electronics inside are floating, and will be housed in three layers of rubber, which serve as shock absorbers," O.D.F. chief Ehud Gal tells Defense News. "You can throw it, or shoot it from a specially equipped sniper’s rifle, and it can stick to the wall or start transmitting as soon as it stabilizes."

With Eyeball's specially designed reflective lens, "everything is in focus and you have an unlimited depth of field," Gal adds.

"The raw image transmitted by the omni-directional lens has a distorted shape." But a couple of algorithms chew up the footage, and spit back out a scene we people can understand. Game, set, match.

THERE'S MORE: The spyball has been revealed, thanks to Defense Tech pal (and Gizmodo guru) Joel Johnson. Behold!

Comments