MetaFilter posts tagged with darpa

"And here is a red balloon.. I think of DARPA and note its exact coordinates"

jessamyn — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:25:37 -0800

"To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge.... The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways." Teams must register by December 1st and have two weeks to submit balloon locations. Popular Science has a bit more. The Register offer some hacks. The Twitter will be here.

Big Brother's just a beetle on the wall

scrutiny — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:54:32 -0800

Cyborg Spy Beetles are no longer a thing of the future. UC Berkeley (funded by DARPA) has created cyborg beetles guided wirelessly via laptop. These spy beetles were created with the intent of bugging actual conversations, literally acting as the "fly on the wall". This, surprisingly, doesn't seem to be a hoax. Here's some more detailed info.

Company Denies its Robots Feed on the Dead

dejah420 — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:28:48 -0800

Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. and Robotic Technology Inc. have sent out a press release denying that their new robot will feed on the dead. "It's a vegetarian!", they claim. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI. “We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” stated Harry Schoell, Cyclone’s CEO.

Mark Roth: The Re-Animator

terranova — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:45:48 -0800

Raising the Dead. When scientist Mark Roth's one-year-old daughter died after heart surgery, Roth obsessed clinically first about immortality, then about suspended animation, when all life processes temporarily cease. His subsequent research work -- placing yeast, nematodes, drosophila, frogs, and zebrafish into suspended animation (clinical death) for up to 24 hours, then reviving them unharmed -- earned him a MacArthur Fellowship and a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Award. Roth's research "offers the possibility of important new clinical strategies for treating trauma, stroke, cancer, and a host of other conditions where temporary reduction in metabolism would provide much-needed time for physicians to address underlying problems."

Coming from Uranus to check my style

Smedleyman — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:25:38 -0800

Another dimension, new galaxy - J.C.R. Licklider was one of the most influential people in the history of computer science . Dr. Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (or “Lick”), was the Director of ARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office and from 1963-64 put in place the funding priorities which would lead to the Internet, and the invention of the mouse, windows and hypertext. In 1960 he was writing about Man-computer symbiosis and The Computer as a Communications Device . He also wrote epic memos such as his 1963 memo to “Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network ”

Vulture to circle for years

backseatpilot — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:06:38 -0800

DARPA has announced the contractors for their "Vulture" UAV system. The plan is to build an aircraft that can stay aloft, uninterrupted, for five years. This article discusses some of the technical challenges. For comparison, Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk has a maximum endurance of only forty hours. Similar aircraft have been explored before, most notably with NASA's Helios, which was lost in a crash in 2003. DARPA's site for the program is a little understated.

The geek old days, when domain names were free and IPv4 ruled the land

ardgedee — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:27:48 -0800

Remember NSFNet? If you had an email account in the U.S. before 1995, chances are most of your mail passed through an NSFNet node. The folks who ran it are having a reunion. Starting in 1986, NSFNET ran the interconnection between research, industry, education and government. It started by joining supercomputers and regional networks across the country through a data backbone running at a whopping 56 kilobits per second (then 25 times faster than anybody else), later increasing speed and quantity of data as demand increased but still directing ever-escalating traffic through a limited set of access points. On April 30, 1995, The NSFNET backbone was changed to a new architecture of private networks joined through peering points, marking the end of an era. More history from the National Science Foundation and Wikipedia.

Would you like to drive a car?

DU — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 06:11:57 -0800

Perhaps you'll recall DARPA's Grand Challenge where autonomous vehicles competed in a off-road race but most barely made it off the starting blocks? And Grand Challenge 2 where they did the same thing more successfully and also filmed a NOVA special?. Well, they are doing it again, on city streets this time.

The teams will attempt to complete a complex 60-mile urban course with live traffic in less than six hours. The finalists will operate on the course roads with approximately 50 human-driven traffic vehicles. Speed is not the only factor in determining the winners, as vehicles must also meet the same standards required to pass the California DMV road test.

Some previews of the contestants including 2005's winner.

Apparently, we can rebuild him...

chuckdarwin — Tue, 01 May 2007 12:00:04 -0800

Doctors in London have made the world's first attempt to treat a retinal degeneration disorder using gene therapy. "The researchers aim to restore the activity in these cells and therefore restore vision by implanting healthy copies of the key gene into the RPE at the back of the eye. In other optical news, wired.com is leading with a piece about "Luke 's Binoculars" (yes, as in Skywalker) - a gadget that is meant to provide soldiers with a 120-degree field of view and allow him/her to be able to spot moving vehicles as far as 10 kilometers away by integrating EEG electrodes that monitor the wearer's neural signals. CTTWS, I presume?

The problem with the two kiloton hand grenade...

blahblahblah — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 00:13:06 -0800

The two kiloton hand-grenade and the dental x-ray machine. For several years, the military spent well over $30 million on a new kind of bomb, based on an isomer of hafnium that would have an explosive power just shy of a nuclear weapon, despite the fact that physicists said it was impossible. Sharon Weinberger (the author of the article in the main link) wrote a book about this project, with a related website. In response, the scientist behind the isomer bomb effort created an oddly childish parody website to mock her book. And, if that isn't strange enough, people have been arrested in the UK for attempting to obtain an imaginary substance, that may or may not be linked to the concept of the isomer bomb.

I Get Up, And Nothing Gets Me Down

fandango_matt — Thu, 18 May 2006 10:21:56 -0800

Send in the clowns: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has submitted a patent for the Man-Cannon, a catapult designed to hurl SWAT teams and emergency workers onto the roofs of tall buildings, human-cannonball style. The inventor? He's none other than Dean Kamen.

Get along, big doggie.

Balisong — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 21:06:29 -0800

BigDog! Check out this video (Windows Media) of the new packhorse for the infantry! "A nimble, four-legged robot is so surefooted it can recover its balance even after being given a hefty kick," A robotic beast of burden from the same guys that brought us weaponized bees and robotic rats. It's a cool concept for a robot, better than most I've seen.

Think...about the bad things

Ogre Lawless — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 03:11:14 -0800

Perhaps you'll recall DARPA's Grand Challenge where autonomous vehicles competed in a off-road race for $1,000,000 but most barely made it off the starting blocks? Yeah, well, they are doing it again this year for $2 million this time. Just one thing: Don't bet on Princeton. [last two links .MOV]

'Why are things as they are and not otherwise?' -- Johannes Kepler

orthogonality — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 08:03:36 -0800

"Do not bind the mouths of the kine that treadeth out the grain." "Do not eat the seed corn." Ancient warnings ignored in Bush Administration science policy

Robonaut

kablam — Sun, 23 May 2004 19:17:08 -0800

Enter the Robonaut. A truly science-fictioney NASA robot. (Note DARPA.)

Build me a robot...

split atom — Tue, 13 May 2003 18:53:36 -0800

Grand Challenge The research arm of the US Department of Defense, DARPA, is sponsoring a $1 million winner take all contest to build a completely autonomous vehicle which can navigate a roughly 250 mile course in the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas in under 10 hours. Teams from Caltech and Carnegie Mellon have formed, though anyone is allowed to enter.

Total Thong Awareness

The Jesse Helms — Tue, 11 Feb 2003 06:47:39 -0800

You love it. Big fan of DARPA's Initiative on Countering Terrorism? Pick up a Total Information Awareness thong or lunchbox - but, you already knew that.

The Self-Healing Minefield

Armitage Shanks — Wed, 27 Nov 2002 14:33:45 -0800

The Self-Healing Minefield From the current Village Voice: "Utilizing commercial off-the-shelf computer chips and 'healing' software, the networked minefield detects rude attempts to clear it, deduces which parts of itself have been removed, and signals its remaining munitions to close the hole using best-fit mathematics."

Bonus ubertasteless Flash animation courtesy of DARPA here. Color me fascinated and repulsed in equal measure.

Fupped Duck — Sat, 09 Nov 2002 18:39:40 -0800

One small step for technology, one giant leap towards a world with no secrets.

jonnyp — Thu, 08 Aug 2002 09:58:21 -0800

Forget TIPS, TIA is the real deal: DARPA's Information Awareness Office is beginning the bidding process for the development of a next-generation information handling system, Total Information Awareness (TIA). The system will capture, cross index and maintain pedabytes of information including: financial, education, travel, medical, veterinary, country entry, place/event entry, transportation, housing, "critical resources", government and communications. By the way: DARPA's Information Awareness Office is run by by John Poindexter, who was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government and destroying evidence.

theplayethic — Sat, 13 Jul 2002 15:52:13 -0800

DARPA: still inventing the future (stand up straight with that exo-skeleton, son). April 2002 list of public projects from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, whose charter (let us not forget) is "to prevent technological surprise from harming U.S. national security by sponsoring revolutionary and innovative high-payoff research." Wonder which one of these beauties will have their payoff in civilian life, a la Arpanet?
And a small niggly point: should this stuff even be made public?