A senior executive at a top U.S. robotics firm once told P.W. Singer, America’s foremost expert on modern warfare technology, that before September 11, 2001, “we couldn’t get anyone to return our calls.” After the attacks? “We were told, ‘Make them as fast as you can,’” the exec claimed. And so it’s gone. (via P.W. Singer’s Robots of War | Motherboard)
Posts tagged "military"
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DARPA Blast Gauge Quantifies Blast Exposure, Leads to Advancements in Countering TBI →
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is the signature wound of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conservative estimates put the number of U.S. warfighters who have experienced TBI at more than 200,000. Battlefield medical personnel today rely on visual signs and the personal accounts of patients to alert them to the possibility of TBI. The DARPA Blast Gauge provides a quantitative means for measuring blast related exposure, thus providing a mechanism for medical personnel to better identify those at risk for TBI. The gauge collects quantitative data to provide medics with a screening tool and data for uncovering the mechanisms of TBI.
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Timeline of NRL's Autonomous Systems Research →
The Naval Research Laboratory [NRL] has been actively involved in research in unmanned and autonomous systems since its opening in 1923. From one of the first unmanned ground vehicles to the development of more than 200 prototype air, ground, underwater, and space platforms, and from smart sensors to smart batteries to robots that reason like humans, NRL’s research has been at the forefront.
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UV Cloak for Navy Jets →
The U.S. military is already investing tens of billions of dollars to make its jet fighters less visible to radars and infrared sensors. Now the Pentagon wants the defense industry to come up with a system that can cloak fighters from another telltale type of radiation: ultra-violet energy from the sun.
The Navy’s latest solicitation to research proposals asks for a “UV obscurant device” that can be “dispersed from an aircraft.” The system should be compatible with the Navy’s existing counter-measures dispensers, which are currently tailored for releasing infrared flares and radar-foiling chaff to help warplanes dodge enemy missiles.
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US selling combat drones to undisclosed countries →
The unmanned aerial vehicle industry is expected to bring in billions for domestic drone makers over the next few years. Where are the robotic aircraft manufacturers sending their stealth spy plans though? They aren’t saying.
The American Independent reports that Texas’ Vanguard Defense Industries, a US Defense Department contractor that outfits the Pentagon with unmanned aerial drones, has inked agreements with several overseas governments. According to the Independent, Vanguard is expected to see most of their profits in the next year occur from selling airships to foreign nations. Just exactly who is on the receiving end — and to the tune of how many crafts — remains a mystery.
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US defends drone use for targeted killing →
A top US official has defended as legal and ethical its use of drone strikes to target terrorism suspects.
The officials comments on Monday by White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan was the most direct acknowledgement yet of the clandestine programme.
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'Bullet time' to stop cyber attacks on power grids →
IN THE MATRIX, the famous “bullet time” effect showed how Keanu Reeves’s character Neo was able to sway out of the path of incoming bullets, as time appeared to slow. Now the film has inspired engineers to develop a way to cope with cyber attacks on crucial infrastructure, such as electricity grids, water utilities and banking networks.
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RoboGames 2012: Mech Warfare
Is scaling these up the future of warfare?
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Should Robots Be Blamed for Battlefield Mistakes? →
If a robot in combat accidentally kills a civilian, who is to blame?
This isn’t as straightforward of a question as it sounds. A team of scientists presented a study at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction and found that although robots don’t have free will, people sometimes treat them as if they do.
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The Robots That Can Be Blown Up and Keep On Detecting IEDs →
The homemade bombs known as IEDs accounted for 60 percent of all U.S. military injuries in Iraq and have killed more than 21,000 Iraqi civilians. Last November, a month before the last U.S. troops departed, Iraq’s federal bomb squad paraded with bomb-disposal robots in Baghdad. QinetiQ North America has sold 16 of the $100,000 remote-controlled Talons to the Iraqi police.
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Army wants uniform to repel invisible threats →
Whether soldiers want to avoid infection during the theoretical zombie apocalypse or just keep clean on modern battlefields, the U.S. Army has their backs. Military researchers have begun sniffing around the idea of specially treated clothing that could not only repel dirt, rain and snow, but also invisible threats from chemicals, bacteria and viruses.
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Piranha USV Concept - Using carbon nanomaterials to build next gen unmanned patrol boats →
The Piranha USV Concept is a long range unmanned concept vessel designed to demonstrate today’s latest materials technology and design theory. Advanced unmanned vessels enable a broad range of unmanned operations on the sea, reducing operational costs and unnecessary risks. Constructed out of lightweight carbon nanomaterials, the Piranha set new standards in range and payload for an unmanned vessel.
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Navy's Robot Helicopters Will Automatically Spot Pirates →
Helicopter drones that have already helped catch cocaine smugglers at sea could soon get much smarter about hunting modern-day pirates. The U.S. Navy plans to upgrade its robotic Fire Scouts with electronic “brains” that are able to automatically recognize small pirate boats spotted through 3D laser imaging.
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Pentagon eyes 'human like' handyman robots: But why? →
A US military agency is to announce Grand Challenge for a new generation of humanoid robots to add it to the country’s military arsenal.
Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is turning its attention to legged humanoid robots. According to robotic news portal Hizook, the agency will soon officially announce its new Grand Challenge for a robot able to “operate in an environment built for people and interact with made-for-human tools.”
DARPA wants the androids to be able to drive an open-frame utility vehicle such as a tractor. The task is to get into the driver’s seat and drive it to a specified location. Then to get out of the vehicle, maneuver to a locked door, unlock it with a key, open the door, and go inside.
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Smaller, Quicker, Secret, Robotic: Inside America's New Space Force →
The past and future of America’s space arsenal intersected, briefly, in the summer of 2011. For two weeks in July, NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis roughly shared its Earth orbit with the Air Force’s X-37B, a 29-foot-long, highly maneuverable robotic spacecraft that entered service in early 2010 and has been cloaked in secrecy ever since. The X-37 was around 80 miles higher than the Shuttle, so it’s doubtful the four-person Atlantis crew, conducting the 135th and last Shuttle mission, ever saw the robotic craft. The X-37′s small size — barely a quarter the length of Atlantis — made a sighting even less likely.
