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'Smart Guns'? Not So Fast Say NJIT Researchers

by Donald Sebastian, Vice President for Technology Development

A personalized weapon ?? sometimes called a "smart gun" ?? currently does not exist, according to an extensive NJIT research study, but the team has developed an approach that may be the first reliable and cost-effective technology leading to "child-safe" handguns.

The study, commissioned by the New Jersey Legislature and approved by the governor, finds no proven technology ready for commercial implementation whose design protects the weapon from use by unauthorized members of the family. This is no small challenge, and requires advances in sensing, pattern recognition, micro-systems design and power generation to produce a reliable and durable system that can perform in the limited space and harsh physical environment of a handgun.

The federal government has been working for nearly 10 years to find a technology to safeguard law enforcement professionals from assault with their own service weapon. Two different manufacturers are working on first-generation prototypes that do not use a protection scheme suitable for the home environment. To be successful in the home environment, a system must be able to correctly distinguish an authorized user without relying upon active measures on the part of the owner to safeguard external authenticating devices or codes, and work with a reliability that exceeds the performance of conventional, mechanical handguns.

Without an ability to automate recognition of the user, these demonstration systems fall prey to the same shortcoming as commercially available locking devices, ranging from trigger locks to gun safes - they provide no safety if the owner fails to use them. The primary value of these devices is to block access by a stranger. Family members are far more likely to have access to hidden keys, combinations or PIN codes.

"If we are to move beyond the level of safety already available to consumers, a solution must be designed to work without an over-dependence upon owner responsibility," said Donald Sebastian http://www.njit.edu/Directory/Academic/IME/Faculty/Sebastian.html , vice president for technology development at NJIT and project leader.

The National Center for Health Statistics reports that guns killed 30,708 people in 1998. Fifty?six percent of those deaths were suicides. Since 1998, recurring incidents of gun violence and threats of violence on school campuses, in the workplace and in communities throughout the nation have increased the public's consciousness of the presence of violence in American society. The consciousness that violence occurs unexpectedly has given rise to widespread concern and even anxiety wherein citizens question, "Could this happen in my school, at my workplace or in my community?"

Existence of a personalized weapon would not eliminate all unlawful shootings or acts of gun violence, according to the study, but the existence of a personalized weapon absolutely would reduce the number of shootings by preventing unauthorized users from accessing or operating such guns. A personalized weapon would be particularly important for law enforcement and the military. A significant percentage of the law enforcement officers killed or wounded in the line of duty are shot with their own weapon.

The NJIT study team concluded that safety or "smart" systems incorporating radio?frequency devices using tiny, wireless transmitters in rings and bracelets to activate weapons are far from failsafe. In fact, weapons that utilize magnetic locks and rings as transmitters are less likely to prevent unauthorized use of a gun among family members. An unauthorized user can fire such a weapon simply by confiscating the ring that is likely to be stored with the gun to permit easy access by the owner in an emergency.

The NJIT study team's research indicates that biometrics does form a suitable basis to personalize handguns maintained in the home. Biometrics is the science of identifying people by measuring their personal characteristics and actions. Systems using biometric sensors do not require man?made keys that can be misplaced, stolen or misused, or codes that may be familiar to immediate family members. The "keys" are the natural, physical characteristics of each and every gun user or would?be user.

The maturest form of a commercially developed biometric sensor is the fingerprint scanner. Silicon-based fingerprint scanners using capacitive and thermal imaging are now in the early stages of use for authenticating Internet transactions. NJIT's laboratory evaluations demonstrate that fingerprint detection lacks sufficient reliability under ideal operating conditions, with typical failure rates of one in four, while firearm reliability is better than one in 10,000. Continued development of fingerprint technology may play an important role in the creation of a personalized weapon, but will need to be combined with other complementary forms of biometric sensing.

The NJIT study team that includes professors Timothy Chang http://www.njit.edu//ECE/faculty/chang.html , Dencho Ivanov, Michael Recce http://www.cis.njit.edu/people/faculty/recce_page.html, Stephen Tricamo, and Sebastian have devised an approach that is simple, inexpensive and activates without any special user intervention. By using silicon-based piezo-electric pressure sensors embedded in the gun grip, the system can identify the user based on the unique "signature" of the individual hand during the first instant of trigger pull. On-board decision electronics and micro-mechanical systems-based actuators then react to either enable or block the firing mechanism.

NJIT was recently awarded a $500,000 supplement to the original $1 million study grant to begin prototyping a first-generation device.

The core technologies to produce such a device are fundamentally related to microelectronics and software and fall outside the resident expertise of gun manufacturers. A number of leading manufacturers have solicited NJIT's participation in collaborative development of new safety technologies, and the university is now acknowledged as the leading center of expertise in this area. By leveraging the previous state funding with industrial collaboration, the team hopes to create a public-private partnership to attract federal support that will bring the technology to market as quickly as possible.

For More, Click: http://www.njit.edu/pwt/reports/pwtreport.html

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