I've been involved with the military and robotics a bit. So this is not far fetched. But it would need to use some of the present military technology to make it happen. The current use of nail strips is far cheaper to deploy, but if a single patrol car is all that is available.
Configure a vehicle launched projectile that would be aimed directly at a fleeing vehicle and launched. The projectile would illuminate and track the vehicle so if sudden changes in position took place it would not matter. The projectile would approach the vehicle and then fly up over the vehicle.(already developed) The down looking camera would then identify the forward portion of the cabin of the vehicle (easily done), and then steer the projectile to impact that centered position.(alread developed)
A highly adhesive compound (goo) would hold the projectile in place.(DuPont) The projectile would contain a ballistic net mechanism, a 2-way radio, a GPS, and several ballistic operated chemical agents.(all currently developed)
Upon impact, the two-way radio would insert through the roof to talk with the driver. Letting him know by name perhaps, that there is no where for him to run. A Kevlar plate would prevent the felon from using a gun to do any damage.
To keep from having to chase after felons on foot, when the vehicle speed dropped to 15 mph (GPS) the net would deploy and prevent anyone in the vehicle from escaping. If a hostage situation exists, the police can remotely trigger the release of the netting. If they take off again, the net is a pretty visible marker and the GPS can telemeter the precise position without following too closely. The net material would be cut resistant.
If the person became too dangerous, the police could remotely trigger a variety of capsules balistically through the roof and into the vehicle (tear gas, smoke, foul odor, vomit agent, ...).
The package needed to do this is anticipated to be about the size of a soda can.
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I like it. Sounds very cool and doable. Though I do wonder what the possibility would be that it might go off course due to user error.
A daily glance at the civilian deaths in Gaza where the highly technical Israeli army kills innocent bystanders with horrifying regularity gives me pause as to the acceptability of employing military methods to civilian use. A flying missile in an ordinary civilian traffic situation may approach high statistical reliability but the possibility of my wife or kids being injured or killed by a rogue piece of technical equipment gone defective makes me cautious about this type of solution at current levels of reliability.
bkeene12 and sand: Any device, including the cars we drive, having careless users or inadequately engineered products always begs disaster. But drug impaired or desparate people can be far more frequent and more hazardous.
When an ordinary guy in New York City trying to exhibit his wallet in New York City to three experienced policemen gets blasted by forty bullets I would beg to be excused from being leery about dispensing violent hardware to the authorities, whatever their technical capabilities. Especially since none of the cops was held responsible for disintegrating a peaceful guy merely going home.
Sand: Innocent people need to be protected and you can't get information from a dead man. Criminals are going to create havoc, and law enforcement agents have the right to protect themselves. How do you change the mindset of people trained to use lethal weapons? You must give them "more effective" non-lethal alternatives. Notice my proposal only has non-lethal features.
Even though most of the device is a net, the velocity just before impact must be reduced to prevent bouncing off the vehicle. A small parachute or proximity charge would need to be activated to help control the impact pressure. If this is highly controllable, the same or similar unit could be deployed at persons on the run and have the unit decelerate a couple of feet above a runner and deploy the net.
bkeene12: Good point. An abort feature would be highly desireable. Have the navigation error handler shut down the projectile mid-flight and deploy its deceleration package. If it loses target-lock or the projectile moves differently and/or in a direction other than expected for a control input, the projectile simply stops, falls to the ground, and incinerates itself. This safety feature might be initiated by ballistically breaching the propellant package housing adjacent to the control and ballistic capsules (tear gas, ...). That way the contaminants are burned up, a marker is created to retrieve the package, all explosive materials are destroyed, and it prevents anyone from salvaging the contents for misuse. Incineration would need to be of the smoldering variety, not the hot flame variety. The net surrounding the propellant capsule might facilitate this smoldering incineration.
After reading your follow up I have more support for this idea. I have to believe that using this type of "weapon" would be in a very controlled environment. If possible law enforcement could have roads closed off, incoming traffic stopped and then the device is fired- possibly from a helicopter. This would give the operator more control as it can get right above the vehicle. You could have a specail unit of law enforcement specifically trained to use such a device.
I too have thought about this watching the the chases on TV and listning to chessy grin man on TV.I would recommend firing an argon cannister or similiar at it to starve the engine of oxygen. The engine stops job done and and so catching them after they are inoccent until proven in a court so to attack them with gas that would harm the driver is just maddness would you want your mothers car stopped with tear gas, get real.Try getting the fat police men fit and take their attacking weapons off them and maybe just maybe people would not run as in run for your life there is a fat guy with a gun.
Do you really think you could get all of that capability in a package the size of a soda can? I think you are grossly underestimating the technical challenges in developing such a device. Your statements about flying over the car and identifying the cabin being easily done are a little misleading. Sure the military has weapons that do that kind of thing, but it isn't as cut-and-dried as you suggest.
How does the officer aim and launch the weapon? What's going to propel it? A solid fuel rocket? Will it have wings? A tail? There's no way you're going to get all that plus avionics, control actuators, GPS, net, net deployment system, batteries, armor, camera, 2-way radio, adhesive goo and chemical agents into something the size of a soda can. Something like that would cost thousands of dollars per unit at least. Of course, if the military developed it it would be tens of thousands if not hundreds. Even if it was only a few thousand, could any police dept afford to equip most of their cars with something like that?
Having said all that, I think it might still be possible to make a somewhat simpler (and probably larger) device that is reasonably effective. I would definitely abandon the net, as this would be bulkier than you realize. Don't forget that the net can't just jump out of the can and wrap around the car all by itself. There would have to be a mechanism to propel it, and that's going to take up space too. You should probably ditch the armor also.
The most realistic design would be just a GPS tracking device that can be shot at the back of the car. It could stick using adhesive, a magnet, or a barbed spike. This would be simple and cheap enough to actually deploy on a large scale.
In response to Dwane: Regarding technical challenges.
As the cost of nano-tubes continues to drop, a net composed of strands the size of human hair would be much stronger than would be necessary to exceed the force a person could exert to tear the net. The nature of nano-tubes allows them to withstand considerable temperatures. A nano-tube is over 1000 times stronger than steel.
A dedicated control system is already available for projectiles much smaller than a soda can, see Future Combat Systems and their smart bullits.
As for camera recognition of vehicle cabins, as cited earlier, the military already implements a very similar technology for killing tanks. Miniaturizing the technology further would certainly be plausible.
Chemical agents can be employed in ballistic pastes that are smaller than a 22 caliber shell and housed in thermoplastics and detonated by microdetonators (Sandia National Labs).
Radio systems like bluetooth are currently the size of several grains of rice placed side-by-side. RFID commonly transpond up to 600 feet away and they don't even have an onboard power supply and are only the size of a single grain of rice.
A soda can size projectile was a conservative figure, it could potentially be much smaller.
See the work regarding micro-machines and the cost savings due to automated mass production. Of particular interest, see the micro-machine mirror drives and their implementation in a Texas Instrument display. Millions of small mirrors are driven by micro-machines to create a display by reflecting light from lamps to and away from the observer. This provides many dB of illumination in excess of what is possible with plasma display technologies. You can buy one of these displays for a couple thousand dollars, and there are millions of moving parts.
As for sensors, literally thousands of different sensors can be embedded in an array the diameter of a dime and much less than a tissue in thickness. Sensing electric fields, explosive compounds, infrared, humidity, .... (See Sandia National Labs deep etch sensor technologies).
As for significantly reducing the function of the device, criminals often flee the scene on foot and put officers and the public in harms way. Containing the criminals without harming anyone was of prime importance.
Wikipedia lists the cost of a sidewinder missile at $85k. I think you've proposed a system that may rival this cost. You would almost certainly have to use jet or rocket for propulsion to catch the car in a reasonable time--
Also, if it's helicopter-launched, that means you have a helicopter handy. Car chases don't get away from helicopters.
Finally, I agree with the libertarians present--I don't want my police to have this much power. What about when it's stolen? What about when the WTO facists actually Do take control of our country? Maybe I'll be the one in the chased car!