DARPA
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This tiny sensor could sleep for years between detection events
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. Luckily, a new type of sensor developed for DARPA uses none at all until the thing it’s built to detect happens to show up. That means it can sit for years without so much as a battery top-up. Read More
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DARPA project aims to make modular computers out of ‘chiplets’
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 weird will take a village, the agency suggested — in fact, “an enormous village rife with innovators.” DARPA did always have a way with words. Read More
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Five reasons to attend TC Sessions: Robotics next week at MIT
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 to the conference, workshops, and networking events. Plus there are going to be robots as far as the eye can see. We hope you can make it and here’s why. Discover how and why robotics are… Read More
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DARPA awards $65 million to develop the perfect, tiny two-way brain-computer interface
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 Design (NESD) program, the agency will fund five academic research groups and one small San Jose-based company to further its goals. Read More
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Boeing will build DARPA’s XS-1 experimental spaceplane
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 simple trips to space for launching and testing satellites and all that sort of thing. Read More
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DARPA shows off its SideArm system catching drones mid-flight
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 the air. Read More
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Crunch Network
The new A-Team: Agile teams of machines
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, DARPA and the U.S. military are in search of a new “A-Team” — only this team won’t be comprised of just humans, it will include a few machines, as well. Read More
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DARPA establishes group to standardize robotic space repairs
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 systems to pick up the slack. Read More
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DARPA’s robo-boat tests parasailing radar
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 it turns out it’s also a sweet parasailing platform. Read More
Latest Crunch Report
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Crunch Network
Capitalizing on foundations of innovation
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 technologies. Most of the companies covered on TechCrunch certainly would not exist if not for the development and commercialization of microprocessors and the Internet. Read More
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DARPA kicks off $2m Grand Challenge focused on intelligently splitting up radio spectrum
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 wing wants to revolutionize something with a bit less sex appeal, but plenty of real-world applications: radio frequency spectrum splitting. Read More
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Toyota Pledges $50M To Research AI For Autonomous Vehicles, Hires DARPA’s Dr. Gill Pratt
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. The company is also investing $50 million in the research over the next five years as well as partnering with MIT and Stanford. Read More
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South Korean Team KAIST Wins DARPA Robotics Challenge With Bipedal Wunderdroid
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 valve, and negotiating obstacles, many robots entered but only one won – DRC-HUBO from a joint team that included researchers from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Team KAIST from… Read More
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DARPA’s Incredible Humanoid Robot Can Now Walk On Its Own Two Feet, No Support Required
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 intimidating: it was loud as hell, and it needed a big, thick support cable to keep it powered and upright. Both of those issues have been fixed. Read More
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DARPA Is Using Oculus Rift To Build The ‘Mega Man Battle Network’ Of Cyberwarfare
In a surprising amount of futuristic visions of how hacking will work in the future, the experience is immersive, rather than something done hunched over a computer looking at lines of code scroll by. DARPA appears to agree with the full-body submersion vision of hacking’s future, as it’s working on an Oculus Rift-based interface for use by U.S. military hackers, one part of its Plan… Read More
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Crunch Network
How To Say No, And Other Tips From Inside SRI’s Venture Process
Editor’s note: Norman Winarsky is the Vice President of Ventures at research and technology development organization SRI International. What have we learned over more than 65 years of invention and commercialization? There are several specific ways in which our venture processes stand in contrast to what is in vogue today. These are lessons that anyone in the business of innovation… Read More
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DARPA’s Cheetah Robot Will Stab You With Its Pointy Legs
Seriously: this is what is going to do our fighting soon. Imagine stand-off situations with this bastard rolling through the door and then skittering across the marble floor of Oslo City Hall straight into a crowd of hostages, aiming right at the gunman. The design is based on Big Dog, our former favorite dangerous monster robot, but this guy can to 18 miles an hour, five miles faster than… Read More
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DARPA Contest Winners Prove Shredders Aren’t Quite As Safe As You Think
DARPA’s Shredder Challenge, a contest to reconstruct documents from a slurry of shredded paper, has been solved, suggesting that my grandmother may be barking up the wrong tree when she shreds the Campmor catalog. Three scientists with experience in computer vision and mobile technology, Otavio Good, Luke Alonso, and Keith Walker, scanned each chunk for unique characteristics that… Read More
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“All Your Shreds Are Belong to U.S.” Wins $50,000 DARPA Shredder Challenge
A San Francisco-based team has just won the DARPA Shredder Challenge. DARPA, the government agency whose work led to the creation of the Internet, challenged the public to reconstruct five shredded documents. The winning team, called “All Your Shreds Are Belong to U.S.” completed the task in 33 days, spending nearly 600 man-hours building algorithms and piecing together more… Read More
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DARPA Video Shows The Evolution Of The Hummingbot Nano UAV
We’ve been following DARPA’s Nano UAV program since 2009, and it’s really remarkable how it’s gone from clumsy to cool to creepy in just a year and a half. DARPA thinks so too, so they put together a little video tribute to the thing. There isn’t much in the way of new footage in this, but it’s nice to have everything in one place. Read More
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