Electromagnetic bullet shield

Anybody remember Plasmagnetic Levitation by Hovertech? It was supposed to be a levitation technology that used a UV laser to ionize the air underneath the vehicle and then an alternating magnetic field to repel this cold plasma downward, imparting an upward force to the vehicle.* The same technique is used in "mass driver" devices some hobbyists have built, where a capacitor bank is dumped through a pancake coil, launching a hard drive platter or similar object placed against the coil into the air. The theory is apparently that the magnetic field induces a current in the conductive medium (plasma or hard drive platter), which then generates its own magnetic field, opposing the applied one. These opposing magnetic fields result in repulsion. It seems to me that this is just like electromagnetic braking but with the roles and action reversed.

My idea here is to use that repulsion to repel incoming bullets. I'm imagining a shield similar in shape, size, and probably material to the ones used currently by SWAT teams (so it's still usable to block any bullets it fails to repel, or in case it stops working) with embedded coil(s) and capacitor bank(s). It also has a pulse doppler radar module built in —these are cheap (tens of dollars) now. When the radar detects an incoming bullet (by how it dopples the radar return), it waits for it to get close enough (by radar pulse time of flight) and then fires the repeller. Hopefully, this results in the bullets dropping to the ground in front of it. I don't expect it to be strong enough or aimable enough to usefully throw the bullets back at the shooter, but maybe if it was mounted on a robot arm or similar (or could control the user's muscles) this could be attempted.

The expected advantages over a passive shield that absorbs bullets' kinetic energy with its material are:
- Doesn't wear out as seriously. (The capacitors will wear out, but they can be replaceable. With a regular shield, it might wear out in one spot while still being fine elsewhere, but at least with some types I expect you have to replace the whole thing.)
- Slows the bullets more gradually, reducing the peak force applied to the user's hand and arm, reducing fatigue, or to the stand if used stationarily, reducing the risk of toppling and/or enabling the stand to be lighter.
- Stops the bullets without deforming them, enabling easier forensics on them.
- Might (conceivably but I don't know if even theoretically) be able to recover energy from the bullets to recharge its battery.
- Might be lighter, and can more easily be transparent or even open in the middle, if you're willing to forgo some passive protection.

It could also conceivably be built into body armor, vehicle armor, building armor, etc.

N/A [probably around 2006–2007]

*That was how I understood it, anyway. But PL apparently evolved from their earlier ferrofluid levitation technology, which used a hollow cylinder of ferrofluid contained by a magnetic field to contain a column of pressurized air that supported the vehicle's weight. So maybe PL was supposed to work that way too, just with plasma replacing ferrofluid.