Guns

If you hear gunshots in an urban setting, it's important to get the police to their source as quickly as possible. A new system is being developed to help, by combining autonomous drones with an existing shot-locating technology.

You've seen Spot run. You've seen Spot jump. You've seen Spot do cute little booty-shaking dance routines. Now, see Spot fire lethal weapons. Sword Defense Systems has presented a precision rifle for robot dogs, capable of nailing targets 1.2 km away.

For people such as soldiers, security officials and airport workers, drones aren't always a welcome sight. That's why drone-jamming guns were developed, and the new Paladyne E1000MP "pistol" is said to be one of the most compact on the market.

The Trijicon Ventus looks like a set of binoculars, but in actuality it's the world's first hand-held device capable of providing three-dimensional wind data at multiple points between a shooter and a target up to 500 yards (457 m) away.

Turkey is preparing to receive its first shipment of armed multicopter drones this month. Made by the country's own Asisguard, the Songar drone can carry 200 rounds of ammo, and can fire with precision from 200 yards thanks to its anti-recoil system.

Increasingly often, when mass shootings occur, bystanders are recording videos on their smartphones. Thanks to a new system, such footage could soon be used to determine the killer's whereabouts.

The keyboard and mouse combo is the long-standing weapon of choice for players of first-person shooter games. Now a Chinese company called Ragnok is trying to ramp up the realism a bit with the Mousegun, a controller that’s designed to look and feel like the handle of a pistol.

There are a lot of loud noises on battlefields. That's why soldiers often wear earphones that electronically protect their hearing. Determining where enemy shots are coming from, however, can be a challenge with such systems. New smartphone-based technology is designed to help.

​Remember the big ol' pulse rifle that Sigourney Weaver used to kill xenomorphs in the movie "Aliens"? Well, imagine if she'd been using an equally-nasty squirt gun instead. Chances are, it would have looked something like the water-bullet-shooting Spyra One.

​It's a sad fact that school shootings are becoming a semi-regular occurrence in the US. While there are varying opinions on what to do about the problem, Intrusion Technologies' Active Intruder Mitigation System (AIMS) is designed to minimize casualties when a shooter does enter a school.

CCTV systems may help security personnel watch for handguns in places such as airports, but the task of manually scrutinizing every person on every screen is still a daunting one. It was with this in mind that researchers recently developed a system that automatically recognizes guns on video.

With the prospect of robot police officers hitting our streets, it's worth taking a moment to look at the current state of affairs, where we're headed, and whether it's a good idea to give robots guns.