Let’s just get something out of the way here. Putting an “i” in front of a word to make it “technological” got old around 2002. I-Ball is a dumb-sounding name in the first place, not to mention that it’s a bit sexually charged. Why not something cool, like a Horus or Eyetron? I understand “i-Ball” is kind of a pun but it’s a poor one.

The Eyetron, as I prefer to call it, is essentially a pair of fisheye lenses embedded in a durable ball along with image sensors and a transmitter. It can be thrown, rolled, or fired from a grenade launcher into enemy areas, at which point it will shoot video and transmit back to a base station, where a program wrangles the distortion to create a quasi-360-degree view of the area around the ball. Handy for scoping out enemy strongholds or suspicious buildings and cheaper than dropping a 5000-lb bomb on them. Less messy as well.