Science News

Working with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL), researchers from DARPA's LS3 program demonstrated new advances in the robot's control, stability and maneuverability, including "Leader Follow" decision making, enhanced roll recovery, exact foot placement over rough terrain, the ability to maneuver in an urban environment, and verbal command capability.

The Pentagon's top research arm just unveiled a new, classified cyberwarfare project. But it's not about building the next Stuxnet, Darpa swears. Instead, "Plan X" is designed to make online strikes a more routine part of U.S.

This video depicts testing of a 1/5 scale demonstrator of the Captive Air Amphibious Transporters (CAAT). The CAAT has air-filled pontoons on a tank tread-like design, enabling them to carry containers over water and directly onto shore.

Check out this artist's depiction of how a retired satellite's still usable antenna might one day be salvaged and turned into a new space asset as part of DARPA's Phoenix program. The goal of Phoenix is to develop and demonstrate technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components from retired, nonworking satellites in GEO to create new space systems at greatly reduced cost. By robotically removing and re-using GEO-based space apertures and antennas from de-commissioned satellites in the graveyard or disposal orbit, space "junk" could become space "asset."

More on DARPA: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=DARPA

DARPA's SeeMe program aims to give mobile, US warfighters overseas access to on-demand, space-based tactical information in remote and beyond-line-of-sight conditions. If successful, SeeMe will provide timely imagery to warfighters of their immediate surroundings via handheld devices.

Articles about DARPA: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=DARPA

This video shows versions of DARPA and Boston Dynamics robots climbing stairs, walking on a treadmill and doing pushups.

Articles about ROBOTICS: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=robotics

There's a growing threat to the U.S. military, according to the Pentagon's premier research wing. No, it's not Iran's nukes or China's missi...

Soldiers controlling bipedal robot surrogates on the battlefield?

Today's dismounted warfighter can be saddled with more than 100 pounds of gear, resulting in physical strain, fatigue, and degraded performance. To help alleviate the impact of excess weight on troops, DARPA is developing a highly mobile, semi-autonomous four-legged robot, the Legged Squad Support System (LS3). LS3 includes onboard sensors to perceive obstacles in its environment and path-planning capabilities to avoid them.

Articles about robotics: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=robotics

Having contributed in large part to the Internet’s very existence, DARPA is now setting out to make its secure networks more secure. But rather than relying upon the conventional notion of a password--a complex string of letters and numerals that an individual must remember--the agency is looking to create a “cognitive fingerprint” for individuals that constantly authenticates that person for the duration of the time he or she has access to a network.

DARPA's latest challenge is a crowdsourced UAV, and here's what they're expecting...

A recently-concluded DARPA program sought to extinguish fires using unusual methods. No water or simple common chemicals for DARPA: instead, this is "a novel flame-suppression system based on destabilization of flame plasma with electromagnetic fields and acoustics techniques." Below, you will find a video of somebody rubbing a fire with some sort of rod, which puts the fire out.