Valorant fan builds real-life Killjoy turret that tracks targets using AI

A YouTuber has built a real-life Killjoy turret from Valorant that’s powered by AI, and it can even target and shoot at people.

From incredible cosplays to building exact replicas of various iconic in-game items, the gaming community continues to show just how creative they can be.

In 2022, one Valorant fan recreated Raze’s Boom Bot in real life using a 3D printer, wowing the entire community. Now, they’re back at it again, building a real-life Killjoy turret from the popular first-person shooter.

YouTube builds real-life Valorant Killjoy turret

In a September 29 video, YouTuber Danny Lum explained that since his last design took the Valorant community by storm, the mechanical design engineer was able to partner with Red Bull for a new project.

This time around Lum aimed to recreate Killjoy’s pesky turret. According to the YouTuber, the project took him six months to bring the turret from the game to real life — where it was then unveiled at the 2023 Valorant Champions in Los Angeles.

The engineer wanted the turret to be able to track and shoot an individual from across an entire room. Just like last time, Lum used a 3D printer to design and build the turret, where it stood at just over two feet tall.

In order to track people just like in-game, the engineer used a Husky Lens AI vision sensor that uses machine learning to recognize its environment.

Originally, the YouTuber attempted to use facial recognition to track, although immediately realized its flaws if an individual were turned around or too far away.

Instead, Lum used the lens’ machine learning to differentiate between colors, where if an individual was wearing a yellow jacket, the same color that Killjoy wears in Valorant, it was programmed not to shoot. If however no yellow was detected, the turret is designed to fire out balls using rotors that spin at 35,000 RPM — over 600 times per second.