19 year-yer-old fabricates practical Bio-metric Smartgun

 A 19-year-old engineer modified a handgun by including a biometric fingerprint reader in the pistol grip.  The biometric reader acts as a technological safety rather than a manual saftey.  The difference, of course, is that a biometric reader only recognizes authorized fingerprints that have been preprogrammed into its software. Without the proper preprogrammed fingerprints, the weapon will not function. The article reports that this technology could be helpful in preventing criminals from using stolen weapons. Even if a criminal was to successful acquire a stolen weapon it would be inoperable without the proper biometrics.  The article also states that it would be useful in preventing suicides and accidental deaths among children.  Most of these deaths occur with weapons that didn't belong to the victim. If  adults had a smart weapon in their household programmed to only their fingerprint, a child that wasn't authorized to use it would not be able to fire it even if it inadvertently came into their possession. This young engineer received a grant from a venture capitalist to start his own company called Biofire.  His startup is going to focus on modifying existing weapons, but he says eventually he would like to produce his own lines of smart weapons.

This smart gun technology is in its infancy stage. In marketing, it would be called the introductory stage.  Not too many people might know about or fully understand this technology.  However, this has been tried before according to the article in the early 2000's, but the technology wasn't as developed making the Bio-reader and unlocking mechanism slow and impractical for self-defense situations.  I would say this handgun is a prototype of things to come.  This young engineer has fixed most of the issues that plagued earlier incarnations. I thnk we will see more companies enter the market to compete and create improvements in smart gun technology.  Personal weapons are in a mature market. Cartridge fired Handguns have been around for over a hundred years.  This new technology introduced into an already developed product would add more value to it and possibly increase sales while at the same time making weapons safer.

The target market of this technology would most likely be households with children, but could also be "techies" as well, who see the current design of handguns as in need of an update in today's modern world.  This also shows haw technology can shake up markets by introducing new ways people interact with products and how technology can make products safer.  Additionally, I would say that this is a Dynamically Continuous Innovation because it only requires minor changes in customer behavior.  Such as ensuring proper finger placement is over the biometric reader while using the weapon.

Read about the story here.
Posted by J. McConnell