DARPA

Hard to believe, but TC Sessions: Robotics is just over a week away. We’ve got some of the top minds in the industry on the schedule for the event, including Andy Rubin, Laura Tyson, Marc Raibert, R

The Menlo Park-based nonprofit research group SRI International has been awarded three contracts by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to wage war on the newest fro

Getting to space is already tough, but getting there on short notice and then doing it again a couple weeks later? That's a big ask. Nevertheless, DARPA is asking it as part of its Launch Challenge, a

The Defense Department's research wing is serious about putting drones into action, not just one by one but in coordinated swarms. The Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics program is kicking off its second

As we’re gearing up for May’s big show, the announcements are starting to come fast and furious. In the past two weeks, we’ve revealed that Andy Rubin, Marc Raibert, Melonee Wise, Robert Full an

Angus Pacala has had a lifelong passion for autonomous cars going all the way back to high school. A little more than a decade ago, he followed the launch of the DARPA Grand Challenge, a Department of

It's easy enough to put an always-on camera somewhere it can live off solar power or the grid, but deep in nature, underground, or in other unusual circumstances every drop of power is precious. Lucki

The Defense Department's research arm has officially kicked off its effort to create a modular computing framework, with pieces pulled from a mix-'n-match set of "chiplets." Producing something this w

Next week TechCrunch is hosting its first ever one-day event centered around robotics. Called TC Sessions: Robotics, there are still a few general admission tickets left which grant the holder access

With $65 million in new funding, DARPA seeks to develop neural implants that make it possible for the human brain to speak directly to computer interfaces. As part of its Neural Engineering System Des

You can hear the champagne corks popping here in Seattle as Boeing is awarded the contract to make DARPA's cool experimental spaceplane. The XS-1, as it's called, would allow for relatively cheap and

Military-style fixed-wing drones are easy to launch, but difficult to land; DARPA aims to change that with SideArm, a portable drone-grabbing system that snatches the fast-moving craft right out of th

One of the most popular shows on television 30 years ago was "The A-Team” -- the story of five rogue military commandos who teamed together to form an elite fighting unit. Now, a generation later, D

If we're to keep thousands of expensive satellites in working order, the job isn't going to be done by humans — and DARPA suggests we all get on the same page before we start designing robotic syste

DARPA's submarine-hunting robot boat plies the seas off the coast of California. Smooth, grey, and purposeful, truly this vessel resembles other predators of the aquatic world in more than mien. But i

Two of the most important technological advances, which helped fueled much of the country’s record economic growth in the post-WWII era, were ubiquitous computing devices and modern communications t

DARPA has a new Grand Challenge underway, but it's not an automation moonshot like the self-driving car challenges of the early 2000s or the recent Robotics Challenge. The Defense Department's R&D

Today, Toyota announced that it has hired Gill Pratt to drive its autonomous car research. Pratt is best known in this field for his work at DARPA and MIT, including starting the Robotics Challenge. T

The DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals is a tough contest. Designed encourage researchers to create robots that can handle multiple difficult environments and tasks including breaching a door, turning a

Remember ATLAS? That massive walking robot that DARPA is building with (the now Google-owned) Boston Dynamics? Last time we saw it, it had two major flaws that made it ever-so-slightly less intimid