Archery may be an interesting sport to watch but aiming the arrow and hitting a bullseye is no joke. Well, no worries! As ‘Stuff Made Here‘ Youtuber Shane Wighton, has created an “Auto-Aiming Bow” to do that job for you. With help of this terrifying invention, Shane was able to hit the target without even looking at it while aiming (sounds just like Robin Hood).
Mechanisms behind the technology of Auto-Aiming Bow
It includes a handheld robot to manage the positioning of the bow (left-right or up-down) by linear axis motors before aiming and another robot to hold and release the drawn string, to take care of the timing. Alongside, a series of OptiTrack motion capture cameras installed around the shop of Wighton are linked to trackable sensors on the auto-aiming bow and the target, including some software to check the camera’s perspective of the auto-aiming bow mechanism.
As reported by Gizmodo, initially, the bow Shane created was not as expected and was unable to hit the target. But after an array of experiments, Shane inquired about the problems of arrow deviation as the bow required the arrow to be fired around itself.
To eradicate the problem, he upgraded to a compound bow with a whisker biscuit, and ever since then, the arrows flew straight and hit the target with every shot. Next came the problem of the immense weight of the string and required more hardware to lighten it. Therefore, a Steadicam rig was attached to the bow, and all the flaws were suspended.
Like all Shane’s other cool inventions, this also took 100+ hours and surplus money investment. Though the invention is not ready for Olympics yet, as it lacks the mechanism to aim farther away targets, and the archer needs to aim higher to account for the arrow’s trajectory.