darpa

A Silicon Valley company has integrated iLink, a social network analytics technology, into three online military communities in hopes of improving the way users, ranging from Army wives to platoon leaders, share critical information across a wide variety of domains.

iLink is a machine learning-based system that models users and content in a social network and then points the user to relevant content, discussions, and other network members with shared interests and goals across a broad range of scenarios.

"iLink learns to deliver the right answers to the right people at the right time," SRI International's David … Read more

There's no way we'd bait the International Olympic Committee like that, knowing how notoriously aggressive they are about controlling their content. They hardly want anyone to see it. That's why all the digital content is Vista only this year. Rimshot! In other news of the day, Nokia bought Symbian, leading analysts to predict everything from global market takeover to complete and utter destruction.

Nokia buys Symbian, turns software over to Symbian Foundation http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/24/nokia-buys-symbian/ http://news.cnet.com/Symbians-new-role-in-mobile-apps-drama/2009-1039_3-6242423.html http://mashable.com/2008/06/24/nokia-acquires-symbian/… Read more

A California company has introduced a 25-watt mobile fuel cell system designed to power a ruggedized laptop computer for up to 14 hours at a time using a single 250cc cartridge.

The XX25, as it is called, internally generates fuel cell-ready hydrogen from a highly concentrated methanol solution, providing power to a field computer and communications equipment at weight savings of up to 65 percent, according to Livermore, Calif.-based UltraCell.

Fuel cells are electrochemical devices that use hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, and continue to produce it as long as the fuel lasts. This is not only ecologically … Read more

DARPA has released some tidbits of information in a briefing on how one might build a propulsion system that combines a Constant Volume Combustion (CVC) engine and a full-scale turbine engine to accelerate a hypersonic jet to multiple Mach.

It's called the Vulcan, and it's a demonstration program designed to power a full-scale reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle like the Falcon HTV-3X, and to do it by 2012. The key, according to the DARPA briefing, is to integrate a currently produced turbine engine like the F110-129 or the F119, with minimal modifications and a CVC (PDF).

The CVC, or &… Read more

Three groups including Georgetown University teamed up Wednesday to develop a new way to measure the glucose levels of diabetes patients without a finger prick to draw their blood.

The technique involves the use of disposable skin patches (embedded with a wireless sensor chip) that can monitor glucose levels, and then transmit that information to a cell phone. With the data, the mobile phone could conceivably control an insulin pump remotely, according to the researchers.

The organizations involved in the project are Georgetown, Gentag, and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a technology development company. Also a tech research firm, Gentag … Read more

iRobot has secured a multimillion-dollar R&D contract for a new type of soft, flexible robot for the military, the company announced Tuesday.

The "ChemBot" project was awarded to iRobot from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Army Research Office.

iRobot did not release any preliminary diagrams or details on what the ChemBot might look like. But some ideas on what a ChemBot might be like can be gleaned from a request for proposals DARPA put out in March 2007. The robot DARPA wants to see must be a soft, flexible, mobile … Read more

Self-driving cars are veering closer to the roads.

Torc Technologies, which collaborated with Virginia Tech on an autonomous Ford Escape Hybrid that placed third in DARPA's Urban Grand Challenge, started selling a version of its self-driving creation Tuesday.

Called the ByWire XGV, Torc's drive-by-wire converted Ford Escape Hybrid will be available as a research platform for academics and car industry types who are interested in developing new applications in the field of autonomous autos.

While the world may not be ready yet for self-driving cars on the road, someone could have a lot of fun on a closed-course … Read more

Unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming a big deal for the armed forces, even when they're really small.

AeroVironment said Tuesday that it has gotten the go-ahead, in the form of a Phase II contract, to design and build a teeny-tiny prototype for the Nano Air Vehicle program at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. How teeny? The defense R&D agency stipulates that a NAV must be smaller than 7.5 centimeters (2.9 inches) and, at no more than 10 grams (one-third of an ounce), "ultralightweight."

A key eventual mission for NAVs would be … Read more