

A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer  - lockmovdwordptr
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-work/start-ups/a-bouncing-ball-to-make-danger-zones-safer-

======
zorlem
This idea (a throwable ball with imaging and other sensors) and several
prototypes have appeared on HN before, the first one around 2 years ago. This
exact product has reached the HN front page in the beginning of 2013 [1].

I find it strange that none of the prototypes have actually managed to reach a
production stage, given that the potential market - military, LE, emergency
responders is (supposedly) there. Maybe the price point doesn't make much
sense, given the usual (low) prices for fixed-focus camera modules - there is
no need for very high resolution here, and the balls better be semi-
disposable.

There are a few other designs (and patents associated with the concept) - [2],
[3] and [4].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4757971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4757971)

[2]
[http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/01/21/surveillance-...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/01/21/surveillance-
camera-ball/0iVRWJaRIlEGoQt9qRP04L/story.html)

[3] [http://www.serveball.com/](http://www.serveball.com/)

[4] [http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera](http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera) (and HN
discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3109899](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3109899))

~~~
lockmovdwordptr
My opinion is that it's significantly more difficult for a startup to sell to
military/fire departments/etc than to the general public. What could likely
happen is that some big company with "good connections" will end up developing
a similar product and get the market.

------
jffry

      What it can’t do quite yet is survive a hard fall, but the company is working on that and expects to have durability testing finished this year...
    

Isn't its durability kind of one of the major selling points? The primary use
of these is to throw them into hazardous environments. It seems to me like
getting the electronics into a package that would survive the beating would be
priority #1

~~~
michaelt
If the aim is to gather a panoramic image while in the air, I would have
thought priority #1 would be getting a compact sensor that didn't suffer
motion blur when flying and spinning at the same time, in low light
conditions, with battery power, low weight and a tiny lens.

I mean, my phone camera produces poor images when I'm trying to hold it still,
whereas a thrown ball can fly at 80mph or spin at 20-30 revolutions per
second.

~~~
jffry
At SIGGRAPH 2010, Microsoft Research showed off a technique [1] where they
attached an IMU (measures acceleration/rotation) to a DSLR. They recorded
motion and used it to deblur the image.

A ball flying and spinning through the air should have a fairly simple blur,
though of a potentially much higher magnitude. I'm not familiar enough with
the state-of-the-art, but my gut tells me that post-facto image processing
could yield impressive results.

This also doesn't have to be extremely high-res sensors. A lower-resolution
sensor with larger pixels would collect more light, allowing for a faster
shutter speed, meaning less blur.

[1]: [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/im...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/imudeblurring/)

~~~
michaelt
I'm not saying it's impossible or anything. If they wanted to they could just
put a bright flash on, or wait for the camera to roll to a stop, or buy a
crazy high performance sensor.

I'm just saying, if I was running the company, that's the problem I'd be most
worried about getting right.

------
happyFunBall

      "To Make Danger Zones Safer"
    

Dangerous for who? Safer from what or whom? This "safety ball" is there to
help one group of people shoot at another group of people, and it's wrong to
implicitly state that one group is good and the other evil, simply by virtue
that one has this Happy Fun Ball, and the other does not. What if both teams
have one? Whose safer now?

I bet this would be just as useful in a home invasion, or whatever, but you
know we always have to put the "WE'RE SAVING LIVES" spin on every escalation
in the Limited Warfare technological arms race.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

~~~
andrewflnr
It makes it safer for the one throwing the ball. Apparently you missed or are
ignoring that those people are just as likely to be disaster responders.

------
nullc
Sometimes I wonder if I'm on hacker news or "Sky mall".

------
Barnabas
My favorite part:

> Bounce Imaging is planning to sell an emergency responder version for about
> $1000, a military version for something under $3000.

Because, you know, _military_.

~~~
jffry
Building it with mil-spec parts can legitimately raise the cost. Generally,
components have a higher failure rate early in their life, then that failure
rate goes down, and eventually goes back up. Mil-spec components are the ones
which survive the early failure rate curve, so you're paying for that
component, plus the others which didn't survive, plus the initial wear-in
process itself.

Now, the $1000 price point on this seems somewhat high, but is difficult to
judge without more specific specs on what's in it.

~~~
bcoates
For custom hardware with a substantial fraction of the feature-set of a modern
smartphone, plus way more sensors, $1000 seems ambitiously cheap.

They aren't going to sell a billion of them, R&D and tooling costs are going
to push the price up a lot.

~~~
jffry
I know that many fire departments and other first responders are very severely
constrained by budgets. There's lots of interesting things out there, but they
just don't have budget for gizmos which cost multiple tens of thousands of
dollars. A $1000 price point seems much more feasible. Though if you throw
this into a burning building, I wonder if it would survive to be used again.

------
walshemj
Would not a small hardened quadrocoptor carrying sensors be better -
presumably you could develop software to autonomously navigate inside a
building.

~~~
fit2rule
Not until a quadrocopter can deal with a shotgun blast, buddy.

