Robotic Sentry Gun

sentry gun

Reader [aaron rasmussen] and his brother Ezra built this awesome robotic sentry gun. The gun is an airsoft replica of an FN P90 and fires 6mm BBs. Pan and tilt are controlled by two hobby servos using a simple controller. Aaron wrote custom software to watch the usb webcam and track targets. There is a video on the site of it being tested

70 thoughts on “Robotic Sentry Gun

  1. i built something similar but with a real pistol. but it had too much recoil for the tripod top, was largely inacurate, could only fire once(tripod/aiming mechansm broke after first shot). plus a friend of mine who is a cop informed me that such a device was illegal since it was considered a booby trap. i hate america. illegal to defend your hame and well being. what a worthless country.

  2. duffman3030, Worthless people make a worthless country, and with people like you around we’ll soon be worthless. Get a damn clue. I’m a gun owner and a proud American. Your only complaint should be that you are too inept at convincing other voters to see things your way through legal means (no LSD in the drinking water). Go jump out of black helicopter loser.

  3. I totally see loquax’s point. But this would be sweet in paint ball. But you would have to put a paintball gun not an airsoft gun and you would need the rage finder and possible a wind speed detector.

  4. Sorry I went off guys. After looking at this thing it would also be sweet to combine this with the IR Camera hack and have an adaptable camera lense (or lenses) to allow this thing to work at night. This would make a great paintball mod.

  5. im sorry to have offended you loquax. its just that while me and my mom were at the hospital visiting my dad our house got robbed. so i built a little defense system and then found out that it was illegal. furthermore, a friend of a friend got stabbed multiple times by some guy who he then shot(in self defense). this friend of a friend then went to jail for carrying a concealed weapon. (the only reason he had it was because he had been attacked before). now you cant say that that is fucked up. that is why i hate this country, because of the laws that always punish the victim more than the purpetrator.
    that having been said the only reason i have yet to enlist in the military is because while i dont mind dying i do mind having my arms and legs blown off and then being discharged. what would i do then? so im getting a college degree then joining so thaif im discharged due to injury or i get riffed then i mont be SOL!

  6. “The idea of this project was to create a fully-automated sentry gun, capable of picking out a human target and accurately tracking and shooting him or her in the heart”

    haha, just shooting them was not good enough, it had to be a heart shot.

  7. HUDSON: We’re all gonna die, man. We’re doomed. Game over.

    RIPLEY: These boys built a sentry gun with no training, and no funding from Homeland Security.

    HUDSON: (whining) Why don’t we put them in charge, then.

  8. This is badass. A real Weapon with this running XP (or Linux or OS X for that matter)is a nightmare. Can you imagine a REAL blue screen of death? But,this setup with a paintball gun filled with pepper spray balls could be a viable home defense option that won’t kill you or your family if it malfunction’s. Oh and that MAY be legal (I don’t know)

  9. NIce work on the robotics and tracking software. I can’t say I care for the application. There are already too many firearms on the planet(whether they are for ‘self protection’ or otherwise.)Nobody’s property is worth taking a life for. How can you ensure that such an automated weapon is protecting life? I regret that many of the wrong people will read this and build something really stupid. and possibly get hurt/killed doing so. Lets keep it fun kids.. stick to spud guns.

  10. I’m thinking it needs an IFF system. Something based on RFID, maybe? Tag friendlies with an RFID tag, set it up to only fire on targets within a certain range (inside the range of the tags) that don’t emit a “friendly” frequency?

    Sound plausible to anyone else?

  11. Wow, thanks for all of the support. I’ve gotten such a huge response, I’ll try to put up an FAQ soon. I really appreciated the links to similar projects, especially the paintball version. I definitely considered a paintball version, but the recoil would be really tough on my rather light servos.

  12. You shouldn’t have much of a problem with a painball version if you wanted to go that route. Paintball guns don’t have much recoil if any at all, due to the fact that the projectile they fire doesn’t carry near the amount of energy that I firearm produces (even one as small as a .22) and doesn’t really move the gun around much. Recoil can always be controlled by adding weight. However, a paintball gun with a fully loaded tank of CO2 may be a bit heavy for your servos to move around effectively. By the way, I would love to see the sourcecode to the software you designed around this application, that is if you are willing to reveal it.

  13. You shouldn’t have much of a problem with a painball version if you wanted to go that route. Paintball guns don’t have much recoil if any at all, due to the fact that the projectile they fire doesn’t carry near the amount of energy that I firearm produces (even one as small as a .22) and doesn’t really move the gun around much. Recoil can always be controlled by adding weight. However, a paintball gun with a fully loaded tank of CO2 may be a bit heavy for your servos to move around effectively. By the way, I would love to see the sourcecode to the software you designed around this application, that is if you are willing to reveal it.

  14. Fuck the police. And you self-richous morons who never served a day in your lives. As for those serving I can safely say they are not laying it all on the line so some fat ass-hole/buracrate can dictate how you should live.

    All that aside. Yea…. America sucks!

  15. Viable home defense? Until your 5 year old daughter wanders downstairs in the middle of the night for some water and is shot (in the heart, and you’re too blame..you give home defense a bad name).

    Oooo yeah, not only a gun in your house, but an indiscriminatory one. Anyone ever see Robocop? The beginning scene with ED-209…awesome!

  16. The thing about home defense that seems to always be forgotten: you don’t have to outrun the bear. That is, say you are a burglar are going to rob someone. You have the choice between house A, that has a BMW out front with a Kerry 2004 sticker on it or house B with a pickup truck and or motorcycle, some bumper stickers denoting devotion to the 2nd Amendment, NRA, your favorite firearm company, favorite shooting sport, Libertarian Party, and/or U.S. Marine Corps and….THIS baby, fully tracking the movements of anyone who enters the yard with intent, implied malice. I submit that most thieves will choose house A. I really like the indelible ink idea, but even simply the idea of a gun-looking device that “watches” you enter someone’s property has a high deterrent factor even with no projectiles at all. Who’s to say the anthropomorphic thing is not taking pictures or dialing the cops/local mafia or a million other things? Very cool and well done gentlemen, I would very much like to see some source code if we may.

  17. Sourcecode!!!
    This a seriously cool project and i would injoy making a variant of it (without the gun/ any weapon)
    Just a laser that follows you around, ive been searching the net for sourcecode for motion detection but cant find squat.

  18. modul8: a burglary may not be worth taking a life for, but how about someone who would kill (to dispose of witnesses) and/or rape your kids? And how do you know ahead of time what this burglar’s going to be like? “Please fill in this survey before forcing entry: (1) are you a crazed killer (Y/N)?”

    vhd: the ed-209 comment is right on the mark. It’s why I would never automate anything lethal. But I’d have no problems with something like indelible paintballs. If it’s accurate enough to do heart shots, maybe it can colour-code the intruder? “What have we here? Red, Purple, Black; hmmm, that would be the burglary from 19 Elm Street last night.”

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