darpa

A new DARPA contest is using balloons to test our social-networking skills.

After kicking off the Internet 40 years ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is again tapping into the Net for a new challenge. The DARPA Network Challenge will award $40,000 to the first person who can identify the latitudes and longitudes of 10 red weather balloons positioned at different parts of the sky across the continental United States.

The 8-foot balloons are scheduled to lift off on Saturday at 7 a.m. PST and remain in their locations throughout the day, until sunset. The contest will … Read more

DARPA has ordered a new system that could make taking a shot at the U.S. military's 38-ton sitting ducks just a little more problematic.

CROSSHAIRS (Counter Rocket-Propelled Grenade and Shooter System with Highly Accurate Immediate Responses) is a modular, vehicle-mounted, threat detection and countermeasure system that locates and engages enemy shooters. It will take on bullets, rocket propelled grenades (RPG), Anti-Tank Guided Missiles and even direct fired mortars, whether on-the-move or sitting still, according to DARPA.

The sole source $8 million contract went to Mustang Technology Group to integrate and test the system on the massive MRAP (Mine … Read more

Carbon nanotech has been applied to everything from boat construction to windshields and now, with a licensing agreement from Livermore Lab, a Hayward, Calif., company will apply it to water desalination and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The National Nuclear Security Administration's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has licensed a new carbon nanotube technology to its spinoff company Porifera. The company will develop permeable membranes for CO2 sequestration, water desalination, and other liquid-based separations based on discoveries made at Livermore.

The technology integrates carbon nanotubes into polymer membranes, increasing the flux of carbon dioxide capture by two orders of … Read more

If you're a person who would gladly relinquish the task of parking your car to a computer, there may be a Volkswagen in your future.

Last weekend, Volkswagen Group of America and Stanford University's School of Engineering hosted a dedication ceremony on the Stanford campus for the new Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory (VAIL) that included the "first ever" autonomous parking demonstration by a driverless car.

The car, a VW Passat called Junior, was developed jointly by VW and Stanford and is the same one that finished second in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Driverless cars have … Read more

The race to develop an unmanned aircraft that can stay aloft for five years at a stretch has entered its second phase, where the prize is a $155 million DARPA contract to build a small-scale demonstrator model.

The project, called Vulture II, will pit three defense contractor teams--Aurora Flight Sciences, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin--against one another and the clock for the right to build a small-scale, working version of a high-altitude, electric-propelled UAV capable of remaining aloft and on station for three months.

The Vulture is expected to serve as an electronic sensor and military communications platform, and … Read more

Ever been out on patrol and had a sudden urge for chapli kabobs with a side of bendai?

That's the sort of mix-and-match experience that could be addressed through a new deal between DARPA and Geosemble Technologies, which makes a product called GeoXray that aims to quickly answer the question "What's around here?" for both government agencies and civilian users. In a nutshell, it works this way: you can peruse dining options or identify enemy assembly areas simply by clicking on aerial images of your area of operations.

GeoXray uses artificial intelligence to assign textual keywords … Read more

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has demoed its Precision Urban Hopper robot, a wheeled ground unit that can leap over 25-foot-tall obstacles and keep on truckin'.

Seen in the video below, released last week by the Sandia National Laboratory, the shoebox-size Hopper easily takes on a chain-link fence, bounces a bit after landing, and then keeps rolling. It seems that a piston-fired leg makes it fly.

The Precision Urban Hopper is being developed by Sandia and Boston Dynamics, creator of the famously creepy BigDog robot, for surveillance operations in urban terrain. Guided by GPS, it is designed to "… Read more

Rafe Needleman and I get in a fight over Windows 7's loose activation policy. Brian Tong suggests we hug it out. Rafe and I seem to prefer stabbing it out. We also take Flickr to task for censoring images and wonder why the Internet addiction center is so expensive.

Windows 7 runs free without activation for 120 days with simple command http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/21/windows-7-runs-free-without-activation-for-120-days-with-simple/

Yahoo deletes anti-Obama image from Flickr http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-deletes-anti-obama-image-from-flickr-2009-8

Twitter … Read more