Robo-Cars Picked for Pentagon Driving Test

36 teams are moving on to the semi-finals of the Urban Challenge, the Pentagon's contest to see if robotic cars can move their way through cities.

That includes all five teams that completed 2005's Grand Challenge driverless rally across the desert.

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DARPA Plays Spot the Suicide Bomber

How do you spot a suicide bomber? And even more important, how do you spot a suicide bomber before they get close enough to blow up their target?

To address this problem, DARPA this year started the Human-carried Explosive Detection Stand-off System (HEDSS) program to develop a system that can rapidly identify human carried explosives (HCEs) at ranges from 50 to 150 meters.

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Text messaging could soon be the new way to call for help

Texting on your mobile could soon be the quickest way to call for police help.

The Government has given the go-ahead for a new 999 text-messaging emergency line which will work in tandem with the traditional call centre.

Soon typing in text speak "hlp 5-o sum1 hs brokN n2 my hous" - 'Help police, someone has broken into my house' - should summon an emergency response.


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An SR-72 in the works?

Ten years after the Air Force retired the SR-71 spy plane, Lockheed Martin’s legendary Skunk Works appears to be back at work developing a new Mach-6 reconnaissance plane, sources said.


The Air Force has awarded Lockheed’s Advanced Development Projects arm a top-secret contract to develop a stealthy 4,000-mph (6,437 km/h) plane capable of flying to altitudes of about 100,000 feet, with transcontinental range. The plan is to debut the craft around 2020.

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Turning cars into wireless network nodes

Taking It to the Streets: UCLA Scientists Seek to Turn Cars Into a Mobile Communications Network

It's no secret Americans love their cars, and modern computer systems have enhanced vehicle performance and safety. For computer science professor Mario Gerla and researcher Giovanni Pau at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, the next step is to take that digital processing power and push it outward even further — by using cars as computer nodes in a mobile network on wheels.

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Aerospace companies target young recruits online

Justin Wong, an aerospace engineering student from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was schmoozing on Facebook.com last fall when he came across a sleek Boeing job ad.

Wong, who had just interned at the aerospace company, saw the banner on the popular social networking site as a "two-way street" — a defence behemoth reaching out to today's youth in their virtual playground.

"My first impression was that Boeing is getting with the times," said the 21-year-old senior, who will work at Boeing's satellite division after graduation. "It shows the company is making an effort to talk to us on our level."

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Microsoft introduces their new "virtual reality"

Military seeks ideas from technology start-ups

The U.S. military, in its search for the next surveillance system, bioterror vaccine or robot warrior, has decided to take a peek into the garage.

Through a program that recently emerged from an experimental phase, the Defense Department is using some of the nation's top technology investors to help it find innovations by tiny start-up companies, which have not traditionally been a part of the military's vast supply chain.

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French startup sees the future, and it includes robots

PARIS (AFP) - Imagine having someone to serve you a glass of water whenever you ask, or even dance if you put on your favourite music.

Now imagine that certain someone is a something -- a robot, in fact.
A French startup named Gostai is doing just that.

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Link: Gostai

Boeing Pico-Satellite Mission To Advance Miniature Satellite Technology

by Staff WritersSt. Louis MO (SPX) Apr 20, 2007

A pico-satellite developed by Boeing to evaluate miniature spacecraft technologies was successfully launched to orbit on April 17 by an ISC Kosmotras Dnepr rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Initial system checks indicate that the CubeSat TestBed 1 (CSTB1) spacecraft is operational and ready for a series of on-orbit demonstrations that will help Boeing further develop nano-satellites weighing less than 22 pounds.

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Open Source Intelligence

All the world's intelligence services subscribe to it. It is arguably the world's best intelligence. Its daily brief is read avidly by anyone who matters in governance the world over. Heads of state and government, foreign and defense ministers, intel agency chiefs and corporate CEOs, from Beijing to Brussels and from Washington to Wellington, subscribe to what has become the gold standard for objective global strategic analysis.

Oxford Analytica is the brand.

OA's latest contribution is "The Global Stress Points Matrix," a list of 20 potential points and where they rank from "negligible danger" of stress to "Very High" and "Extreme." Overlapping "High," "Very High," and "Extreme" stress points are: 1. United States/Iran: U.S. strike on Iran 2. United States: Deep Recession 3. China/Taiwan: Armed Hostilities

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Intel Demonstrates New Type of Memory Chip

Intel Corp. has demonstrated a new type of memory chip that could one day replace flash memory technology.

Justin Rattner, chief technology officer for the world's largest chipmaker, demonstrated the so-called phase change memory at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing Tuesday. He said samples of the 128-bit device would be sent to customers in the first half of the year, CNet News reported.

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Industry Top User of New NATO Web Portal

NATO’s new Web portal for matching industry with allied governments seeking counterterrorist technologies has generated more user interest from industry than governments, though NATO officials remain optimistic about the site’s potential.