Tag: DARPA

Impact Lab > DARPA
Alternative Transportation, Automation, Driverless vehicles, new technology, Science & Technology News

DARPA awards contracts for autonomous ‘Sea Train’

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DARPA concept

 The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded contracts for its Sea Train program, which seeks to enable autonomous vessels to perform long-range transit operations.

In September, Applied Physical Sciences Corp., Gibbs & Cox Maritime Solutions and Mar Technologies were chosen for the program, which will include two 18-month phases.

The contract awards’ total potential values were $31.2 million, $30.4 million and $28.5 million, respectively. Through the effort, DARPA wants “to provide some operational flexibility for medium-sized unmanned surface vessels,” said Andrew Nuss, a program manager within the agency’s tactical technology office. Each company is “developing a unique approach to be able to address the goals of the Sea Train program.”

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Driverless vehicles, Engineering, Military, Science & Technology News

Researchers create robots that can transform their wheels into legs

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Concept illustration of the adaptable Wheel-and-Leg Transformable Robot currently being developed under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract.

A team of researchers is creating mobile robots for military applications that can determine, with or without human intervention, whether wheels or legs are more suitable to travel across terrains. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has partnered with Kiju Lee at Texas A&M University to enhance these robots’ ability to self-sufficiently travel through urban military environments.

The DARPA OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program awarded Lee, associate professor in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution and the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, and a team of graduate students another contract after her prior successful accomplishments on developing a mixed-reality swarm simulator with embedded consensus-based decision making for adaptive human-swarm teaming as part of the OFFSET Sprint-3. This project was showcased at OFFSET’s third field experiment (FX3) with other participating teams.

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Biotech, brain hacking, brain-computer interfaces, Elon Musk, Science & Technology News

Elon Musk is one step closer to connecting a computer to your brain

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Neuralink has demonstrated a prototype of its brain-machine interface that currently works in pigs.

At a Friday event, Elon Musk revealed more details about his mysterious neuroscience company Neuralink and its plans to connect computers to human brains. While the development of this futuristic-sounding tech is still in its early stages, the presentation was expected to demonstrate the second version of a small, robotic device that inserts tiny electrode threads through the skull and into the brain. Musk said ahead of the event he would “show neurons firing in real-time. The matrix in the matrix.”

And he did just that. At the event, Musk showed off several pigs that had prototypes of the neural links implanted in their head, and machinery that was tracking those pigs’ brain activity in real time. The billionaire also announced the Food and Drug Administration had awarded the company a breakthrough device authorization, which can help expedite research on a medical device.

Like building underground car tunnels and sending private rockets to Mars, this Musk-backed endeavor is incredibly ambitious, but Neuralink builds on years of research into brain-machine interfaces. A brain-machine interface is technology that allows for a device, like a computer, to interact and communicate with a brain. Neuralink, in particular, aims to build an incredibly powerful brain-machine interface, a device with the power to handle lots of data, that can be inserted in a relatively simple surgery. Its short-term goal is to build a device that can help people with specific health conditions.

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Driverless vehicles, Engineering, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Get on board the Sea Train

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DARPA’s Sea Train concept hopes to enable a convoy of medium-sized unmanned vessels to travel across the ocean without refueling, before splitting up to conduct independent operations. (Courtesy of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)

Imagine the following scenario.

Four medium-sized U.S. Navy vessels depart from a port along the United States’ coast. There’s no crew aboard any of them.

About 15 nautical miles off the coast, the four vessels rendezvous, autonomously arranging themselves in a line. Using custom mechanisms, they attach to each other to form a train, except they’re in the water and there’s no railroad to guide them. In this configuration the vessels travel 6,500 nautical miles across the open ocean to Southeast Asia. But as they approach their destination, they disconnect, splitting up as each unmanned ship goes its own way to conduct independent operations, such as collecting data with a variety of onboard sensors.

Once those operations are complete, the four reunite, form a train and make the return journey home.

This is the Sea Train, and it may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is investing in several technologies to make it a reality.

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cutting edge, Engineering, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

A cave is no place for humans, so DARPA is sending in the robots

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DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge aims to make cave exploration a more robotic affair.

Outside its cavernous passageways, the mine’s entrance is emblazoned in red lettering that reads “Safety Research Coal Mine.” This site is just one of two mine systems at the Bruceton Research Center in Pittsburgh. They were once part of a full mine system but were split apart for research purposes after the U.S. Bureau of Mines leased 38 acres of land from the Pittsburgh Coal Company in 1910.

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Great Videos, Science & Technology News, Weapons

Self-steering bullet proves it can hit moving targets: DARPA

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EXACTO self-steering bullet.

The Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) is a self-steering bullet program announced by DARPA that passed a developmental milestone this past February. According to DARPA, and the video below, experienced and novice shooters alike were able to strike moving targets. And, in the case of expert shooters, able to hit actively evading targets as well.

 

 

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Analysis, Brain, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

DARPA ElectRx program explores new neuromodulation technology to help the body heal itself

ElectRx

The new Electrical Prescriptions (ElectRx)  (pronounced “electrics”) DARPA program aims to develop new high-precision, minimally invasive technologies for modulating nerve circuits to restore and maintain human health, initiated in support of the President’s brain initiative.

 

 

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Science & Technology News

The DARPA Grand Challenge 10 years later

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2004 DARPA Grand Challenge

Fifteen vehicles left a starting gate in the desert outside of Barstow, Calif., to make history in the DARPA Grand Challenge on March 13, 2004, a first-of-its-kind race to foster the development of self-driving ground vehicles. The goal of the race was to autonomously navigate a 142-mile course that ran across the desert to Primm, Nev. The longer-term goal was to accelerate development of the technological foundations for autonomous vehicles that could ultimately substitute for men and women in hazardous military operations, such as supply convoys.

 

 

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