Engineer Builds A Real-Life Portal Turret

If ever there was a perfect defensive weapon, it would be a turret with a voice so soothing and design so minimalistically innocent, you feel guilty about murderously destroying it.  We have Portal to thank for that; but we are now one step closer to this being a reality, as a budding engineer has built a real-life version of this stationary weapon.

Built for an "Advanced Mechatronics:" possibly one of the greatest names for a class at Pennysylvania State University, the turret is built on a two dimensional acryllic frame which forms the familiar outline of the Portal celebrity of sorts.  Thie device is equipped with two Nerf guns, mounted with servo mounts and an IP webcam to detect targets and neutralize them. 

The camera identifies simple targets via its RGB colour array and an programmed algorithm via a piece of software called MATLAB (it'll pick up a brightly coloured piece of clothing for example), lock on and track you until one of two occurences: either you stop moving and it'll fire, or you walk out of its range and hear the signature turret voice beckoning you to return.

Will you come over... here?

As of now, if we're being picky, it's not all that faithful design-wise to the Portal turret (except the voice), and it's not that rapid with movement; but the creator has said he's working on software improvements and a new 3D shell for the device.  We look forward to seeing the end result!

Source: Reddit

Jason England