can this be done? realistic?

[macha]

a friend and i plan to design and fabricate a sort of home radar/tracking system.the objective goes like this.there is a dark room and we are flying a remote controlled helicopter(a small one).it is desired that a radar/tracking system placed on the floor should track it,follow it and hit it with ping pong balls.now how to go about.we need to keeep this whole thing as simple as it could be.

we had an idea.make a hexagonal mirror drum.which rotates both in the vertical plane and the horizontal plane.360 degrees in the vertical and about 30-40 in the horizontal.rotation achieved by servo motors/stepper etc...we will position a laser beam and focus it on this rotating drum.this will scatter the laser rays in the whole room.any random ray striking the helicopter will illuminate it and a camera fitted on the rotating drum will lock the target,follow it.the rotation should stop now.and the feedback signal to a micro controller will do the analysis and fire the balls.gear trains needed..calculation of gear ratios needed.etc.what do u say?how credibile is dis?.got any other idea.please help me with an embodiment.thank u.

[zeke]

Can be done I wouldn't bother with mirrors. Why not a 2 axis gimbaled system ? But you need a good control and math background for this. Shooting balls with accuracy might work depending on distances and speed of target.

[macha]

yea but ...where to start with..suppose the helicopter is moving at a constant speed and at a constant height in the horizontal direction in the room.our rotating head should scatter the laser beams such that the distance between each reflected laser beam should be small enough to track the helicopter.for example the distance between successive laser beam is 10 m and the length of the copter is 20.only then the camera can happily have the range in which it has caught sight if the helicopter and thereafter it can track its movement..follow it etc.......where to start with....relative speeds?...is the geometry of the rotating head. i.e hexagonal correct? what steps to fix for the stepper motor etc...