DARPA

September 4, 2007 Europe’s answer to America’s DARPA challenge is currently seeking entries for 2008. The Military European Land Robot Trial (M-ELROB) is calling for European civilian entrants keen to test their robot minions against several military scenarios in front of a panel of judges. The aim is to find robotic solutions that can be deployed in the near future to help save soldiers’ lives. Read More

August 10, 2007 It might not have the publicity, crowds or glamour of a Formula 1, NASCAR or MotoGP event, but the DARPA Urban Challenge is unquestionably the most important motoring event that will take place on Planet Earth this year viewed from an historical perspective. That's because the competing cars will be driven entirely by computers and the ground-work is being done to finally remove the most unreliable part of the automobile - the human being that drives it. The rules of engagement have been known for some time, but now the venue has been named - the Urban Challenge will take place in Victorville, California at the site of the former George Air Force Base on November 3, 2007. Thirty-six semi-finalist teams have also been named to compete at the National Qualification Event (NQE) will take place at the same location, October 26-31, 2007. Read More

This has to be one of the most 'futuristic' developments we've seen in some time; a new U.S. patent has been awarded to a company that has plans for a safe, silent personal flight device using electromagnetic ion propulsion as its primary thrust generator and drawing its power wirelessly from earthbound inductive green power broadcast stations. California's Personal Flight Systems are taking a serious look at the future of personal flight, and the technology involved will leave you shaking your head. Read More

May 31, 2007 One of the advantages of having a human at the controls of an aircraft when things go wrong is that we have the ability to adjust and intelligently work around a problem – the tales of valiant airmen bringing home planes that have no right to still be flying are myriad. Now it seems that the humble, computer-controlled UAV is set to learn such skills too. Flight control and navigation systems provider Athena Technologies recently demonstrated the damage tolerant flight control and autonomous landing capabilities on a subscale F/A-18 UAV. See the videos … Read More

May 31, 2007 Cyborgs and bionic humans have long been the domain of science fiction with the concept popularised by the seventies TV series, Six Million Dollar Man, about a cyborg working for the OSI. As technological development funded by military spending has accelerated in recent times, we’ve seen the development of the bionic eye, the bionic hand and the bionic arm, with lots of work also being done in the area of exoskeletal robotics to help soldiers run faster and longer and carry heavy loads. Now it appears that we’re about to see the concept of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Cyborgs morph. Whilst UAVs have been among the most successful and high-profile innovations in military technology over the past decade, the arena of unmanned aerial technology is about to become a whole lot stranger as hybrid insect-machine "cyborgs" become a reality. The prospect of a remote controlled dragon-fly capable of transmitting video and other environmental data from the front-line still seems like the stuff of science-fiction, but research into hybrid insect-machines is accelerating under the auspices of DARPA. Read More

May 11, 2007 The Boeing Orbital Express system has completed another first by successfully performing a fully autonomous free-flight rendezvous and capture operation. The demonstration of the two-spacecraft system is part of an ongoing Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) mission to validate on-orbit servicing capabilities. Using its onboard cameras and advanced video guidance system, the Boeing Autonomous Space Transport Robotic Operations (ASTRO) servicing spacecraft separated from the NextSat client spacecraft, backed away to a distance of 10 meters (33 feet), maintained proximity flight with NextSat for a full orbit, and then approached and captured NextSat with its docking mechanism. The demonstration occurred at full spacecraft autonomy to mark the first on-orbit rendezvous and capture operation performed with no active exchange of relative navigation information or any intervention or control from the ground. Read More

April 19, 2007 Imagine the United States attempting to fight a war if the Global Positioning System (GPS) were suddenly unavailable. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has obviously thought about it has just awarded a concept development contract to a team of corporations led by Boeing. The objective of the Robust Surface Navigation (RSN) program is to develop technologies that can exploit various "signals of opportunity" -- electronic waves emanating from satellites, cell phone towers and even television transmission towers -- to provide precise location and navigation information to ground troops when GPS signals are being electronically jammed or blocked by natural or man-made obstacles, such as foliage or buildings. The team includes ROSUM, the only company that has used broadcast television signals to locate mobile assets. It's also the first company to combine television and GPS signals for truly robust situational awareness in all environments. Read More

March 5, 2007 Two years ago, we wrote about the “time-shifting” drug, Modafinil that enables you to stay awake for 40+ hours with close to full mental capacity and with few side effects. The drug is a eugeroic and offers improved memory, mood enhancement, improved alertness and cognitive powers, and has a much smoother feel than amphetamines because they work differently. Popular Science is now reporting that we’re just about to see new forms of super eugeroic called armodafinil (Modafinil’s creator Cephalon is awaiting FDA approval for the drug), and a drug code-named CX717 from Cortex. Both drugs promise even longer periods of wakefulness, and in experiments with Ampakine CX717, sleep-deprived rhesus monkeys on the drug often outperformed their own well-rested but undrugged best efforts on mental-performance tests. While these drugs will be marketed to assist people with sleep disorders like narcolepsy, it’s their potential as recreational and workplace performance-enhancing drugs that make them worth watching. The times they are a changing … Read More

February 19, 2007 The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge marked a milestone in artificial intelligence when five autonomous vehicles finished the course and Stanford Racing Team’s Stanley went down in history as the winner of the first race for autonomous vehicles. Centuries from now, the win will be equally significant as winning the first auto race from Paris to Rouen in 1894. Indeed, a century from now, there’s every chance that cars will all be autonomous, as computers make less mistakes than human beings. The robots in the 2007 Urban Challenge, however, will need all of Stanley’s capabilities plus a whole lot more as this time they need to handle real traffic. “In the last Grand Challenge, it didn’t really matter whether an obstacle was a rock or a bush because either way you’d just drive around it,” says Stanford Team Leader Sebastian Thrun. “The current challenge is to move from just sensing the environment to understanding the environment.” Thrun is the Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and Associate Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. When the bookmakers frame the odds for the Urban Challenge, Thrun’s charge will be favourite. On Saturday, Thrun introduced Stanford Racing Team’s new challenger to the world. Junior is a new generation of autonomous vehicle built to accomplish missions in a simulated city environment, which includes the traffic of the other robots and traffic laws. This means that on race day, November 3, Junior not only will have to avoid collisions, but he will have to master concepts that befuddle many humans, such as right of way. Junior began life as a 2006 Volkswagen Passat wagon. Read More