The Force Field is the tiny drone helicopter you can 
see hanging from the SWAT Officer’s belt (above).

I do a few things which constitute my day jobs. Most of them have to do with consulting with governments and various companies. At Ashima Devices, I work to create some very cool “devices”, some of which you can view on the website and some of which, you can’t. 
FOX NEWS carried one of the devices on its military force protection top ten list. The smaller variant is shown below in its prototype development phase. The advantage of this unit is two-fold. First, it’s very small and is usually carried inside a nylon pouch on a police officer’s or soldier’s belt (ALICE or MOLLE) and secondly, it’s very inexpensive.
It’s not simply a camera on a quadcopter because the image taken by the camera is 3D. You can read more about it on the Fox News link or on the Ashima Devices website.

21 COMMENTS

  1. Neat piece of kit there

    Seems like just a couple steps now to the fleets of robotic insects we've heard of… ones that can penetrate an enemy leadership bunker through the ventilation system and look for Saddam's retinas.

    Or fly up in a swarm of titanium bugs right in front of enemy aircraft at takeoff… and into the engines

  2. Race – Under $200 for the quadcopter. The monitor is an additional $200 but it's a one-time expense. You can smash up the quadcopters if they land on a road and a car drives over them, etc. They are not as tough as a Samsonite suitcase. Depending on how rough you treat the quadcopter there is a refit program to put it right for a nominal fee. The battery packs do wear out depending on how faithfully they're recharged.

    The thermal/low-light/infrared model quadcopter is a bit larger to support the cooling unit on the camera. It uses a larger battery, different blades, etc. The camera is also located center-of-mass because it's heavier. That unit retails for $500.

    In the world of government equipment, it's dirt cheap.

  3. LA – The answer is no and yes.

    At the moment, the production capacity is small enough that it's devoted to meeting the demand from principally law enforcement. We want the officer who is going to walk into a back yard (your back yard) to be able to look over the fence before he opens the gate to an armed felon or an angry dog. Though DHS, Border Patrol and the US Military have expressed serious interest, the capacity isn't there to meet their demand.

    As the capacity increases and institutional buyers are satiated, I expect that we'll sell them to anyone — including you, LA.

  4. How does it hold up to goose hunting loads?

    Looks like skeet shooting might just become a tactical skill after all…

  5. Toaster, you'd need something heavier than a #8 shot skeet load because of the vertical range involved unless you're using a goose gun with a very long barrel.

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