DARPA

High performance web search

By Mike Hanlon

June 13, 2006 Search is the name of the game on the web these days because it’s where decisions get made about where to spend money – if you can control the space where the best informed (and hence most lucrative) decisions get made, then you win the game. Not surprisingly, as the amount of available relevant information (reports, research, emails, blogs, news stories, documents ad infinitum) continues to increase at a bewildering rate, our ability to make informed decisions is in danger of being overwhelmed (hands up all those who feel like that – see!!!!). Faced with this exponential expansion of information and information sources, how can anyone know with certainty that they have reviewed all available relevant information? Or uncovered the facts and relationships critical to sound decision-making? Insightful Corporation was this week issued a U.S. patent for the "Inverse Inference Engine for High Performance Web Search." The invention is designed to provide a faster and more scalable alternative for intelligent keyword search techniques. With this invention, Insightful claims users will realize a richer and more relevant search experience than traditional statistical keyword techniques. The invention is designed to enhance the end user's search experience by providing related and recommended options based on the user's query found within unstructured text such as web sites. Read More

DARPA Grand Challenge III – the urban UGV

By Mike Hanlon

May 3, 2006 We’re very excited this week about the prospects for Unmanned Ground Vehicles given the unveiling of Crusher and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announcing plans to hold its third Grand Challenge competition on November 3, 2007. The DARPA Urban Challenge will feature autonomous ground vehicles executing simulated military supply missions safely and effectively in a mock urban area. Safe operation in traffic is essential to U.S. military plans to use autonomous ground vehicles to conduct important missions. So rapidly have UGVs developed in the last few years thanks to Grand Challenges I & II, we suddenly see the prospect of unmanned vehicles being used in civilian occupations – a driver that never sleeps, obeys all the laws, costs a fraction of a human being’s time. Delivery robots make sense and within a few years our bet is that the technology will be in place. The winner gets far more than just US$2 million, as the leading contenders have found in previous events – the world will beat a path to your door if you can win Grand Challenge III. To win, you’ll need to have your UGV complete a 60-mile course through urban traffic under six hours. The UGV will need to be able to merge with traffic, read traffic signs, navigate roundabouts, busy intersections, avoid running over errant pedestrians, avoid obstacles – just like a normal automobile driver. Read More

Crusher - futuristic Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle

By Mike Hanlon

May 2, 2006 Safeguarding the soldier is the key aim of the Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle – giving soldiers enhanced stand-off capability was the reason DARPA funded the Grand Challenge and backed up again two years later with the second challenge and is now holding the challenge in an urban area – such contests dramatically accelerated research into autonomous navigation and identified the most capable people to for the military to work with. The National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) is part of the Robotics Institute in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, unveiled Crusher last week. Carnegie Mellon vehicles finished a close second and third in the Grand Challenge though everyone knew they were at the bleeding edge of robotics knowledge, the Challenge just confirming it. Crusher demonstrates just what we can expect to see on the battlefield a decade from now. In what might well be seen as an offspring of the Grand Challenge, “Crusher” is a new breed of UGV – an NREC-designed, six-wheeled, all-wheel drive, hybrid electric, skid-steered, unmanned ground vehicle. The bohemoth weighs 14,000 pounds fully fueled, and is designed to carry a 3,000-pound payload – at this 17,000 pound total weight, two Crusher vehicles can be carried by a single C-130H aircraft and dropped into any region in the world. Once on the ground, Crusher can carry up to 8,000 pounds of payload without compromising its mobility – read that as 8000 pounds of smart stuff – any combination of cargo, armour, armaments, or surveillance equipment. Crusher is also designed to withstand extreme terrain, with the ability to take in its stride regular impacts with trees, boulders, fences, tree stumps and ditches at high speed. With six wheel independent drive, Crusher can go up and over almost anything, and if in the process it should get upside down, it moves its wheels to the other side of the vehicle and starts all over again. Crusher's hybrid electric system is silent, using a high-performance SAFT-built lithium ion battery module which delivers power to the six, in-wheel UQM traction motors located in the hub drive system of each wheel. Much, much, more … interesting stuff! Read More

The Cormorant MPUAV

By Mike Hanlon

March 23, 2006 ADDITIONAL IMAGES AND INFORMATION If, as the men-behaving badly magazines tell us, “he who dies with the best toys, wins” then the United States military will invariably triumph, and it will only be a matter of deciding which arm of the military has the best array of the ultimate gizmos. The Cormorant concept, should it be built, is likely to give the Navy a big leg up! The Cormorant is a submarine/sea-launched and recovered Multi-Purpose Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (MPUAV) - a unique concept to extend the capabilities of the newly modified OHIO-Class SSGN submarine as well as surface combatants such as the Littoral Combat Ship. It could enable renewable, organic air operations for long-range, survivable, all-weather reconnaissance, battle damage assessment, or specialized mission support (e.g., special forces re-supply) in a broad spectrum of operations. In particular, the combination of a stealthy SSGN submarine platform and a survivable MPUAV could introduce new capabilities to support future joint warfighting operations in high-threat scenarios. Read More

BAE unmanned aerial system takes wolfpack sensors to the air

By Mike Hanlon

March 4, 2006 BAE Systems recently demonstrated its vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aerial system (UAS) at Fort Benning, Ga., for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and U.S. Army representatives. The unmanned system is designed to fly for more than one hour, and deploy a signals intelligence (SIGINT) payload, known as "WolfPack." As part of DARPA's Network Centric Experiment VIP Demonstration in January, BAE Systems integrated WolfPack with its UAS to demonstrate the deployment and relocation of the sensors. Read More

The world's most advanced quadruped robot

By Mike Hanlon

March 4, 2006 Boston Dynamics has released images and details of BigDog, which it is billing as the most advanced quadruped robot on earth. If that seems like a tall claim, check out this video of BigDog (Caution 27MB WMV) doing its thing by walking over uneven ground, up slopes, over piles of rocks, snow, through water etcetera – though clearly still in development, BigDog is incredibly impressive and we challenge anybody to view the movie and not see BigDog’s future potential as a perfectly-mannered mechanical pony for children, as an all-terrain four-legged “wheelchair” that can take a 90-year-old for a walk over an orienteering course or a mechanical mule to carry all your camping gear into the middle of the wilderness or … much, much more. In short, BigDog is a quadruped robot the size of a small horse, and could equally have been called a robotic mule, because its skill sets are pre-destined to see it pressed into military service as a mule-like carrier companion for soldiers where conventional vehicles cannot go. Initially developed with funding from DARPA, BigDog’s raison d’etre is to carry ammunition, food and supplies into battle. BigDog can walk, run at speeds up to 3.3 mph, climb over rough terrain or up slopes up to 35 degrees and carry heavy loads – currently up to 120 pounds, but as development goes on, that figure might be significantly increased. BigDog is currently annoyingly noisy thanks to power being delivered by a gasoline engine that in turn drives the hydraulic actuation system for its legs. BigDog is much more than a dumb mule however - it is a pointer to the future - a wonderful example of humanity learning from the biomechanics and energetics of animal movement to build better robots that will serve humanity in many endeavours. Go on, check out the video - we promise you'll show all your friends. Check out the article's images gallery to see clips from the video and schematics. Read More

New Radar Scope offers X-ray vision

By Mike Hanlon

January 15, 2006 There was once a time when a concrete wall on the battlefield meant that a soldier was both safe from bullets and invisible to the enemy. Thanks to the coming XM25 Advanced Airburst Weapon System and DARPA’s latest invention, the “Radar Scope”, the concrete wall has now been rendered useless on both counts. The new "Radar Scope" offers warfighters the very same x-ray vision with which SuperMan captivated a generation of youngsters – it can see through walls. The Radar Scope is a light-weight, low-cost, through-wall personnel detector that uses stepped-frequency radar to detect subtle changes in Doppler signature of the returned signal. Put simply, it is a motion detector that can see through walls. Read More

Nanotech coating to cure fogging permanently

By Mike Hanlon

December 12, 2005 Nanotachnology looks set to permanently fix the problem of fogging glass, with the news that a team of MIT scientists has developed a silica nanoparticle polymer coating for glass or plastic that creates a permanent non-fog surface. When commercialized sometime in the next few years, the technology will find immediate application in products such as eyeglasses, helmet visors, camera lenses, skiing goggles, bathroom mirrors and shower screens, but it will be in our cars that we will most likely first encounter the technology. Driving is a sight-response game and if you can’t see, you’ll lose. Not surprisingly, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was one of the major funders of the project as having a foggy windscreen makes you vulnerable in battle as well as on the roads. When a cold surface suddenly comes into contact with warm, moist air, thousands of tiny water droplets condense on it, scattering light in random patterns and causing the surface to become translucent. The coating prevents this by attracting the water droplets and reducing their contact angles with the surface. As a result, the droplets merge into a uniform, transparent sheet rather than forming countless individual light-scattering spheres. Nanotechnology will also enable the same coatings to have superior anti-reflective properties that reduce glare and maximize the amount of light passing through (good for greenhouses and solar cell panels). Read More

A160 Hummingbird unmanned rotorcraft can loiter for 24 hours

By Mike Hanlon

December 7, 2005 Boeing’s A160 Hummingbird unmanned rotorcraft made its first test flight using a six cylinder Subaru engine on November 30. The new A160 successfully flew for about 30 minutes in the vicinity of an airfield near Victorville, California, bringing the total number of A160 test flights to 32 and the total number of flight hours to 58. The Hummingbird features a unique optimum speed rotor technology that significantly improves overall performance efficiency by adjusting the RPM of the rotor system at different altitudes, gross weights and cruise speeds. It is designed to fly autonomously, for much longer periods of time (in excess of 24 hours), over greater distances (2,500+ nautical miles), at higher altitudes (up to 30,000 feet), and much more quietly than current helicopters. Read More

X-50A Dragonfly Canard Rotor/Wing prototype completes hover flight

By Mike Hanlon

December 6, 2005 Boeing’s second canard rotor/wing (CRW) X-50A Dragonfly unmanned air vehicle (UAV) has successfully completed a four-minute hover flight at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground reaching an altitude of about 20 feet above ground. The aircraft combines the vertical takeoff/landing capabilities of a rotorcraft with the high-subsonic cruise speed and agility of a fixed-wing airplane. As its name implies, its versatility is achieved by having a specially designed rotor for vertical takeoffs and landings that can be stopped in flight to serve as a fixed wing for jet cruise. Under an agreement with DARPA, Boeing Phantom Works has built and flight-tested two pilotless demonstrators to assess and validate the advanced rotorcraft concept and according to Clark Mitchell, Boeing Phantom Works program manager for the CRW prototype, the flight was “a significant achievement toward validating the new stopped-rotor technology.” Read More

UAVs get smaller: the Micro Air Vehicle nears readiness

By Mike Hanlon

October 26, 2005 As the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have unfolded, one of the new stars in the theatre of battle has been the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). As each new conflict redefines war based on the technologies coming of age at that time, the Iraq campaign has seen the coming of age of the UAV in its many wonderous forms. It is the most-requested capability among combatant commanders and in the last 18 months, UAV numbers in Iraq have jumped from fewer than 100 to more than 400 and there are now nearly 600 UAVs in the Afghanistan and Iraq theatres. Even more interesting is the dizzying array of unmanned aircraft used in traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance UAV roles. Now we’re set to see UAVs get smaller – much smaller. The United States Future Combat Systems (FCS) program recently passed a significant milestone in its progress toward selecting a Class I Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system. The MAV has achieved a technology readiness level 6 and is now ready to begin transitioning the technology to the FCS program as an affordable backpackable systems suitable for dismounted soldier, Marine, and Special Forces missions. It will focus on the development of lift augmented ducted fan MAVs to accomplish unique military missions, particularly the hover and stare capability in restricted (e.g urban) environments to provide real-time combat information. Read More

Stanford University wins DARPA Grand Challenge race for robots - five complete course

By Mike Hanlon

October 10, 2005 The DARPA Grand Challenge race for autonomous robotic vehicles has been run and won, with five robots completing the 132 mile course and the first four all finishing within minutes of each other. History will record however, that the winner was Stanford University’s Volkswagen-based "Stanley" beating out the two Carnegie Mellon Team Red entries by 11 minutes and 21 minutes respectively, with the Gray Team a further 16 minutes behind in fourth place. Had minor circumstances played out differently, any one of those four teams could have taken the US$2 million first prize and a place in history. As the Stanford vehicle crossed the line after 132 miles, the team's followers cheered and lifted team leader Sebastian Thrun shoulder high. Thrun is the director of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Lab and Associate Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. Congratulations to Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and to the team, and congratulations too to Carnegie Mellon robotics professor William "Red" Whittaker who put two vehicles in the race and finished with a close second and third place. It was a far cry from the results of the first DARPA Challenge, where the best-performed vehicle travelled just 7 miles – all but two of the 23 vehicles that started this event bettered that performance and four completed the course inside the allotted time. Most importantly, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsorship of the event over the last two years has yielded pure gold – the US$2 million prize has catalysed a dramatic acceleration in the development of autonomous ground vehicle technologies and demonstrated conclusively that autonomous robotic vehicles can travel long distances across difficult terrain at militarily relevant rates of speed. Read on for a full report from Gizmag’s Robotics reporter, Dan Christian with images and assistance from Eric Zbinden. Read More

Field finalised for DARPA Grand Challenge

By Mike Hanlon

October 6, 2005 The DARPA Grand Challenge National Qualification Event (NQE)

Is finished and 23 robotic vehicles have been selected to compete in the Grand Challenge final event this coming Saturday, October 8, in the Mojave Desert near Primm, Nevada. The finalists will traverse a rugged desert course that features lakebeds, narrow desert roads, tight turns, tunnels, gateways and treacherous mountain passes. The actual course will not be revealed to teams until two hours before the event begins at approximately 6:30 a.m.

(PDT). The team whose vehicle traverses the entire course the fastest in under ten hours will win US $2 million. Dan Christian attended the NQE and filed this report. Dan will also be reporting for Gizmag from what promises to be one of the most significant automotive races in history. Read More

New technology turns petrol engines into low compression diesel!

By Mike Hanlon

October 3, 2005 It has been a sudden realisation - the world is running out of oil and the laws of supply and demand are set to make petrol prohibitively expensive in the very near future. Sonex Research has a new combustion technology that offers significantly better fuel consumption and greatly reduced emissions. The Sonex GDI Combustion System uses pistons modified to carry a chemical charge that initiates combustion from one cycle to the next, thus eliminating the need for spark plugs. High compression, typical of diesel engines, is no longer needed to make the fuel ignite; in fact, the chemistry causing this auto ignition process exists only at lower compression ratios. Thus, a low compression engine, typically used for burning gasoline, can be designed to burn either a lighter alcohol fuel like ethanol, or a heavier fuel like (bio)diesel when equipped with Sonex pistons, common rail direct injection system and associated electronic control system to control injection pressure and timing. The technology could well be first deployed powering UAVs for the military in Iraq. By James Bauernschmidt Read More

The Walrus: the US Army contemplates building an aircraft the size of a football field

By Mike Hanlon

September 6, 2005 Moving an elephant atom by atom costs a lot more than moving the elephant in one pre-assembled lump. And that is what the US Army’s Project Walrus is about – putting together an entire action unit of war machinery, with all the wiring and plumbing preinstalled, and placing it in the most strategic place. Whilst this would completely rewrite the way that war is conducted, the Walrus - a massive lozenge-shaped blimp the size of a football field capable of transporting 500 tons at a time - could offer solutions to myriad peacetime problems, opening land-locked countries to trade, enabling heavy construction materials to be delivered into urban centres with minimum disruption, freeing our highways of high volume, heavy loads, offering a more robust and agile air transportation network capable of absorbing disruptions due to weather or attack. Indeed, business logistics could again be completely rethought and streamlined because many physical transportation limits would no longer apply once a fleet of commercial walruses became available. The walrus does not require an airstrip and can land on water or on open ground. Read More

X-45A Unmanned Combat Aircraft graduate with flying colours

By Mike Hanlon

August 11, 2005 – Two Boeing Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) X-45A unmanned aircraft successfully completed a graduation exercise when they flew their most challenging simulated combat mission to date earlier this week at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. For test flights 63 and 64, the X-45As departed from the base, climbed to altitude, and autonomously used their on-board decision-making software to determine the best route of flight within the "area of action" or AOA. The pilot on the ground approved the plan and the two unmanned vehicles entered the AOA, a 30 by 60 mile area within the test range, ready to perform a simulated Preemptive Destruction-Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses mission. The mission involved identifying, attacking and destroying pre-identified ground-based radars and associated missile launchers before they could be used to launch surface-to-air missiles. During the test flight, the X-45A unmanned aircraft faced a simulated "pop-up" threat, used evasive maneuvers to avoid it, and autonomously determined which vehicle held the optimum position, weapons and fuel to attack the higher priority simulated target. Once the pilot authorized the attack, the unmanned aircraft simulated dropping weapons on the target. After engaging and destroying a second simulated target, the two X-45As completed their mission and safely returned to Edwards. Read More

First human robotic arm implant

By Mike Hanlon

July 15, 2005 The first implantation of robotic arms into a human being is to be performed at the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In a statement issued by the hospital, an agreement was signed during June that will see a team of neuroscientists from Duke University, in the United States, led by Brazilian doctor Miguel Nicolelis, perform the implant in approximately three years time. A microchip implanted into the patient's brain will make it possible to control the prosthetics. Nicolelis has long been regarded as the most-likely to develop the technologies for such a procedure, having recently been named one of the 50 top scientists in the world by Scientific American. Read More

Unmanned Air Combat X-45C to get Autonomous Aerial Refueling capabilities

By Mike Hanlon

July 12, 2005 The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Boeing an additional US$175 million to continue the X-45C portion of the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) Capability Demonstration Program, adding a full demonstration of a new Autonomous Aerial Refueling technology and culminating in an in-flight X-45C refueling by a KC-135 tanker in 2010. By adding autonomous refuelling to the X-45’s already scary capabilities , the United States will be able to provide “an even longer sustained, lethal presence in hostile airspace holding enemy forces open to immediate surveillance or destruction." Read More

Boeing X-45A Unmanned Aircraft Demonstrates Autonomous Capability

By Mike Hanlon

June 25, 2005 The Boeing X-45A unmanned aircraft continues to impress in trials as it showcases its ability to adapt to a realistic and changing wartime operational environment. During a recent test flight, its 52nd to date, an X-45A departed from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California, climbed to 29,000 ft. and entered the base’s test range. While flying the mission, several simulated Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) emitters were activated and the unmanned aircraft autonomously created its own flight plan to remain out of lethal range of the simulated SAM sites. Always managed by the pilot-operator, the X-45A then attacked its simulated priority ground target and showcased the ability to suppress enemy air defenses. Once the aircraft had conducted a simulated battle damage assessment, the X-45A safely returned to Edwards. Read More

DARPA GRAND CHALLENGE 2005: 40 Teams through to next round

By Mike Hanlon

June 8, 2005 The DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 autonomous ground vehicle competition was narrowed down to 40 teams yesterday – the teams which will compete from September 27 to October 5 to be one of the final 20 teams to compete in the second “race of the century” on October 8, 2005. The DARPA Grand Challenge is a race for fully autonomous vehicles – no drivers, no human assistance, no remote control. From the point that the vehicles leave the starting gate on October 8, they will be on their own an vehicles must travel approximately 150 miles over rugged desert roads using only onboard sensors and navigation equipment to find and follow the route and avoid obstacles. See our race report from the first race or read on for details of the second race and contestants. Read More

DARPA Grand Challenge 2004 autonomous ground vehicle competition

By Mike Hanlon

March 13, 2004 will go down as one of the most significant dates in technological history – the first running of the DARPA Grand Challenge. As in the first automobile race 110 years earlier, a significant “Grand Prix” of US$1 MILLION was posted, though the competitors knew they were really competing for a place in history and many spent multiples of that amount just preparing for the race. The 142 mile course of rugged desert terrain from Barstow (near Los Angeles) to Primm (near Las Vegas) had to be traversed within ten hours by fully autonomous vehicles – no drivers, no human assistance, no remote control. Significantly, the race was not won, and the mass media coverage bordered on mockery. Read More

The Joint Strike Fighter on show at Australian International Airshow

By Mike Hanlon

February 24, 2005 The future of military aviation, the potent Joint Strike Fighter, will be featured at to the Australian International Airshow in March where a full scale and technically detailed replica of this massive and imposing warplane will be on static display for close inspection by military decision makers, aeronautical engineers and the general public to inspect the aircraft. It will be equipped with the latest computerised control and combat systems. Read More

UAV learns to think for itself - now technology will transition to military

By Mike Hanlon

February 22, 2005 Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are one step closer to someday matching, and possibly surpassing, their human-piloted counterparts, thanks to the successful completion of a project at Georgia Tech. The project showed that Gatech's GT Max rotary wing UAV is able to learn as it flies, manoeuvre aggressively and automatically plan a route through obstacles thanks to its Open Control Platform system. Researchers from several partner institutions and organizations have helped to successfully build, test and fly GTMax, with capabilities of flight control fault identification and reconfiguration, adaptive control and agile manoeuvring - all operating on a single vehicle and under a single software architecture. Read More

OSHKOSH Expedition Class AWD Motorhome

By Mike Hanlon

It's an expedition-class AWD motorhome. Shahn Torontow built the vehicle so his wife V.Ross Johnson could still travel the wilderness after the former wildlife photographer became wheelchair dependent. A gift of love for his wife, he began with an OSHKOSH M1000 ARFF (AIRPORT FIRE RESCUE) and then spent thousands of hours crafting an extraordinary vehicle that offers complete luxury almost anywhere - the body is constructed mainly of stainless steel and is a one-off with no expense, effort or love spared. The military-grade vehicle has been lavished with the finest so Torontow could withstand deserts, mountains, mud, hurricanes and blizzards while caring for his wife. It contains a shower, sauna, auxiliary heat systems and heat gain/loss protective window shutters, CCD surveillance system, GPS, broad band satellite links for computer communications and an elevator ... and it's for sale. Read More

New Medium Altitude Endurance UAV to deliver better real-time reconnaissance to soldiers in urban battle zones

By Mike Hanlon

February 2, 2005 - Northrop Grumman has successfully completed the first phase of flight testing a demonstrator version of a new medium altitude endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Soldiers in urban battle zones could receive more timely and complete information about enemy forces from low-flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with the technologies being developed. Read More