Military Tech

Along with the ICBM, it was one of the defining pieces of military technology during the Cold War: the B-52 bomber.

Those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s knew the B-52 Stratofortress as a central figure in the anxiety that flowed from the protracted staring match between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. On the one hand, it was reassuring to know that the Strategic Air Command was ready at a moment's notice to scramble its B-52s to counter any potential nuclear attack. On the other hand, if the bombers were flying that mission, well, things … Read more

Humanoid-robot soldiers may be getting closer to reality with DARPA's next Grand Challenge, which apparently will involve getting a robot to pull off some pretty impressive handyman skills.

According to robotics Web site Hizook, DARPA's Gill Pratt recently outlined the challenge, which calls for humanoids to be used in industrial disasters and rough terrain.

The ultimate object is to build a robot that can work in a human environment and use human tools. The industrial setting is no surprise in the aftermath of Japan's Fukushima nuclear crisis, in which various robots from the U.S. have lent a helping hand (or manipulator). … Read more

After three tours in Afghanistan as a trauma surgeon for the Canadian Navy, Dr. Dennis Filips was inspired -- by a simple hair clip -- to design a medical clamp that can stop traumatic wound bleeding in a matter of seconds.

Now the device, due to hit the market in multiple countries later this year, has earned Filips the top innovator award at last week's Life Science and Health Care Ventures Summit in New York.

The ITClamp will "level the playing field for everybody," Filips recently told the Edmonton Journal. (His firm, Innovative Trauma Care, is based … Read more

Boston Dynamics, creator of the very awesome BigDog and a menagerie of other bots, is sending two small reconnaissance robots to the U.S. Army for testing.

Sand Flea and RHex, developed with funding from the Army's Rapid Equipping Force, are off to the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) to pass safety and reliability assessments.

Three RHex units have already been delivered to ATEC and Sand Fleas will join them later this year, Boston Dynamics said in a release. The machines could improve soldiers' awareness of threats in war zones.

RHex is a six-legged, 30-pound crawling bot inspired … Read more

It seems like the U.S. Navy is getting all the cool toys these days. Hot on the heels of the Saffir humanoid firefighting robot, comes Robojelly.

Robojelly may sound like the business half of a sandwich for Cylons, but it's actually a robotic jellyfish.

If we accept the premise that robots are inherently cool, we have to extrapolate that underwater robots based on gelatinous sea creatures are extra cool. Robojelly is the nickname for a project under development by The University of Texas at Dallas and Alex Villanueva at Virginia Tech for the Office of Naval Research.… Read more

The very first aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy wasn't even an aircraft carrier at first. Instead, it was toting coal and cargo.

This week marks 90 years since the USS Langley was commissioned and helped set in motion a whole new class of naval vessels and a new era of naval warfare. The mission was experimentation -- how best to have aircraft take off from and land on a tiny airstrip that doesn't hold still.

In the 1920s, "Langley was the platform from which Naval Aviators, guided by Captain Joseph M. Reeves, undertook the development … Read more

Queue up The Village People doing "In the Navy." Then follow it up with "Mr. Roboto" by Styx. Next, throw in Hendrix doing "Fire." Put it all together, and you'll have the perfect soundtrack for the Navy's new humanoid firefighting robot, named Saffir.

Saffir stands for "shipboard autonomous firefighting robot." I could just stop here and let that description be enough awesomeness for one day, but there's more.

This humanoid robot comes from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. It is designed to fit through the cramped passageways of Navy ships, interact with the sailors onboard, and fight fires with cool features like the ability to throw PEAT grenades. No, not that kind of peat. We're talking "propelled extinguishing agent technology."… Read more

MIT researchers are trying to get computers to correctly interpret hand signals used by crews aboard aircraft carriers so that robot planes can follow them.

As Northrop Grumman continues to develop its X-47B robot stealth plane, which is aimed at carrier use, Yale Song and colleagues at MIT are working on a machine learning system that could allow autonomous planes to understand crew directions.

In its research presented in the journal ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, the team used a database of abstract representations of 24 gestures often employed by carrier personnel. They trained an algorithm to classify gestures, including posture and hand position, based on what it knew from the database. … Read more

Researchers at the University of Michigan say they have developed a simple litmus-like test for nerve gas that could clue military personnel into when they might actually need to use those heavy masks and protective gear. (Nerve gases, the most toxic of chemical warfare agents, and are colorless, odorless, and tasteless.)

"To detect these agents now, we rely on huge, expensive machines that are hard to carry and hard to operate," Jinsang Kim, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan, said in a statement. "We wanted to develop an equipment-free, motion-free, … Read more