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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The Latest Bizarre Gizmos at the DARPATech Conference

ANAHEIM, Calif.—The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is approaching its golden anniversary, and there's reason to celebrate. If we can trust the commemorative deck of cards they're handing out at the DARPATech conference, the Pentagon's most radical, forward-thinking scientists have accounted for no fewer than 52 major technical innovations since 1958.

Check out the high-energy lasers on the four of diamonds, the night-vision goggles on the six of clubs, and the whizzing stealth fighter aircraft on the queen of hearts. And let's not forget the agency's trump card, here assigned to the jack of spades: Thirty-five years ago, DARPA helped create the earliest version of the Internet.

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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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Jet engine tested at 10 times speed of sound

An experimental jet engine has been successfully tested at speeds of up to 11,000 km (6,835 miles) per hour, or 10 times the speed of sound, during trials in Australia's outback, defense scientists said on Friday.

The experimental scramjet engine is an air-breathing supersonic combustion engine being developed by Australian and U.S. defense scientists that researchers hope will lead to super-high speed flight.

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DARPA's Stick-On Body Sensors

DARPA is now accepting applications for a new "smart tape" sensor patch to monitor the health of soldiers on and off of the battlefield.
Have smart shirts lost their luster already?

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French Research Agency Validates Flapping Wings for Micro Drone

Remanta - De l'usage d'un microdrone
Uploaded by syl20g

Flapping wings might be better than rotors for a small surveillance UAV, engineers with the French aerospace research agency ONERA said June 18 at the 47th Paris Air Show.

ONERA’s simulation studies on a third-generation micro air vehicle dubbed Remanta show that such wings used less energy than a mini-helicopter design while delivering speedy flight, hover, endurance and agility, engineers Agnès Luc Boulah and Bruiec Danet said.

The Remanta is a partial demonstrator with a 15-centimeter wing and endurance of around 10 minutes. The micro-drone would fly on a programmed route into confined spaces, perform urban reconnaissance and send imagery for target acquisition and designation. The range would be a few hundred meters and include day/night capability.

Actuators would drive the flapping carbon-fiber wings. The major challenge is finding the power source, which must be compact and deliver 10 to 20 watts. Advances in power cells for mobile phones show promise.

A working demonstrator could be fielded in 10 years, the engineers said.

Labs in Cranfield and Shrivenham in Britain, German researchers and DARPA are also working on flapping wings for micro aerial vehicles.

Can cyborg moths bring down terrorists?

A moth which has a computer chip implanted in it while in the cocoon will enable soldiers to spy on insurgents.

At some point in the not too distant future, a moth will take flight in the hills of northern Pakistan, and flap towards a suspected terrorist training camp.

But this will be no ordinary moth.

Inside it will be a computer chip that was implanted when the creature was still a pupa, in the cocoon, meaning that the moth’s entire nervous system can be controlled remotely.

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Spotting Improvised Explosives U.S. Funds Lasers, Infrared Sensors To Find Roadside Bombs

By ROSS STAPLETON-GRAY

Cheap and varied, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have killed more U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than any other weapon. The Pentagon is funding at least a half dozen proposed ways of finding the bombs before they go off.

These include detecting chemical and electronic signatures, identifying trigger transmitters, finding the explosives themselves with earth-penetrating and multispectral scanning technologies, and recognizing bomb-related activities that indicate an imminent attack.

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Boeing-Led Team Developing Surface Navigation Concept For DARPA

by Staff WritersSt. Louis MO (SPX) Apr 19, 2007

How would U.S. ground troops navigate precisely and effectively if signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS) were not available? Boeing and an industry team are getting the chance to tackle that problem under a concept development contract awarded recently by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

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.

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