They're in the room!
How real is this gadget from the movie Aliens?
Welcome to TechFinitive x FlashForward, our fortnightly newsletter where we pick a technology featured in a classic movie and fast forward to where it’s at today.
Alien’s Motion Detector
Flashback: A platoon of locked and loaded space marines head to a storm-lashed planet to rescue some cosmic colonists. Despite warnings from Sigourney Weaver's alien-battling hero Ripley, the cocky grunts are supremely confident in their high-tech smart guns, badass armoured car and portable motion detectors. This handheld motion tracker can "see" through walls, leading to suspense-filled scenes as the screen fills with green blobs swarming towards our heroes...
Flashforward: In the first Alien movie, directed by Ridley Scott and released in 1979, the crew of the spaceship Nostromo faced a deadly space creature. In an attempt to find it within the shadows of their cavernous spaceship, they cobbled together a crude device that detected “micro changes in air density”. A more advanced model of motion tracker was dreamed up by writer and director James Cameron to add suspense and combat action to his classic sci-fi sequel Aliens.
In 2019, a startup named Lumineye won a US Army competition to receive funding for a lightweight motion-tracking device called the Lux. According to the company, the 3D-printed gadget uses radar waves to detect movement up to 30 or 40ft away, through walls, smoke and fire.
But the key ingredient is software that differentiates humans from other objects. In the film, the tracker sends out waves that register movement on the screen, along with (very stressful) sonar-like pinging sounds which get louder and louder. In real life, Lumineye's device displays movement on an everyday tablet.
The movie's motion tracker only recognises movement on one plane. The supposedly battle-hardened marines have somehow never noticed this glaring drawback, so are outwitted by the alien horde's fiendish strategy of coming at them from a slight angle. Let's hope a real-life version is a little smarter.
The military invested for obvious reasons, but a motion tracker could also save lives in the hands of first responders and emergency services carrying out search and rescue operations, for example finding people trapped in rubble or uncovering hostages.
We haven't heard much about the Lumineye device since then. But there are various ways such a device should work, such as millimetre-wave detection. The human body emits millimetre-wave radiation waves which pass through solid objects, so movements as small as heartbeats and respiration can be spotted even beyond walls, fog, rain and other obscuring environmental factors. Millimetre-wave radar is used on Apache attack helicopters to track targets from the other side of a hill or trees.
Who should make one?
We'd love to see this built by literally anyone that isn't backed by the military, so a real-life motion tracker could become a tool for saving people, on this planet and elsewhere.
Track it down
The Alien movies are all on Disney Plus in the UK.
Fun fact
The prop used in the film was built from a Kango 426 drill with some random camera equipment and part of a Casio calculator stuck on. Today, dedicated Alien fans and space marine cosplayers can buy a highly detailed replica.
The Private Hudson Award for misuse of technology
"Can't be, that's inside the room!" "You're not reading it right!"
Verdict
Made in the years following the Vietnam War, Cameron's film is a metaphor for a military-industrial complex which over-relies on technology - and we know how that turned out, on-screen and off. Let's get this one in the hands of some lifesavers.
Down the rabbit hole
Obsessive detail on the MS-314 from other Alien-themed media, including video games: https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/M314_Motion_Tracker
The U.S. Army Could Get The Handheld Motion Tracker From 'Aliens' https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a29566510/motion-tracker-army-aliens/
Mythbusters Adam Savage builds his own Aliens motion tracker prop:
Cool read, thanks. Such an iconic device in a film, with an even more icon sound. I love that Casio calculators were involved in the prop, hehe. Great info.
Have seen Alien and the 2nd sequel many times. Saw the debut film in New York with a rowdy crowd that yelled things like "Don't go in there!" and "Don't touch that crab leg!" and a bit later, "Hell, I told you not to touch that leg!" It was riotous.