If you’re too frail to take the full impact of a paintball round let this tank serve as your surrogate. The camera perched on top of the platform feeds video back to the operator’s head-mounted display. Instead of using a joystick or other traditional controller, the user aims by looking around, with his or her head movements mimicked by the camera and barrel of the tank. It looks cooler than it sounds so jump with us after the break to see for yourself. If you’re playing against this thing, we’d recommend aiming for the camera lens.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3ZV3wMjneE]
Looks like a prototype terminator tank. Pretty slow though so I wouldn’t consider it much of a threat unless it were uber quiet and could sneak up on you. Exposed wire also poses a robocop moment “these look important *RIP*”. No video of it’s terrain movement?
Lag and drift seem to be the big barriers to usability here. You’d have to spend a lot more time re-engineering the turrent to make it turn fast enough to keep up with a person’s head movements.
I wanna see this with an AirSoft mounted!
the link for the project page is no longer available. was it just mis-typed, or is it really gone?
Typo in the link. Try this one:
http://www.botjunkie.com/2010/08/31/head-controlled-paintball-robot/
This is probably a prototype for a military application. I used to operate that robot platform in Iraq to disarm roadside bombs. Too bad a base model cost over $100K because I would like to see this at local paintball field.
@Sebastian: Dude. Thanks for your service.
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Yes, I’d like to see a few of these going at it in a field someplace!!!
I’d love to get a closer look at that bot.
Well, shit.
Looks like we all know who’s winning the next Paint-or-Pain game.
To clarify my original post: paint-or-pain is a game type in which the players are eliminated either when they run out of paint, or they can’t take the pain. I’ve never played it personally, but I’ve heard stories of people just unloading on one another with a box (containing 2000 rounds) at their feet.
This is definitely a prototype as someone suggested. The robot is a Talon and it is made by a company called Foster-Miller, a subsidiary of Qinetiq North America.
This looks pretty cool but seems a tad slow. Overall, genius! It seems to be quiet so it could possibly sneek up on opponents.