Latest DARPA Stories

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online In yet another instance in a long line of attempting to bring science fiction to real life, DARPA has invited scientists to help them create Vanishing Programmable Resources, or VAPR. In other words, hardware that self-destructs on command. Such hardware with a very real deadline could be particularly useful on the battlefield, where all sorts of technology, including cell phones and sensors are absolutely required material. Once...

[ Watch the Video: Phoenix Program Demonstration of Latest Advances ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online One new satellite repurposing program could bring old satellites out of retirement, giving them a new goal as they remain in orbit. DARPA said on Tuesday it is developing a new program for the old satellites that hurdle through space 22,000 miles above the Earth. The goal of the Phoenix program is to fundamentally change how space systems could be designed...

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Kevin R. Fall, a computer scientist and engineer with broad experience in government and industry, will join the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI) January 30 as deputy director for research and chief technology officer. In this role, Fall will direct the research and development portfolio of the SEI's technical programs in cybersecurity, software architecture, process improvement, measurement and estimating, and...

DARPA Most people are familiar with the concept of RADAR. Radio frequency (RF) waves travel through the atmosphere, reflect off of a target, and return to the RADAR system to be processed. The amount of time it takes to return correlates to the object’s distance. In recent decades, this technology has been revolutionized by electronically scanned (phased) arrays (ESAs), which transmit the RF waves in a particular direction without mechanical movement. Each emitter varies its phase and...

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online While in the process of inventing methods with which to quickly deploy drones to the other end of the world, DARPA has come up with an idea that resembles something from a Michael Bay movie. The title of their press statement says it all: “Falling Up: DARPA To Launch Just-In-Time Payloads From Bottom of Sea.” There’s a lot of cost and complexity involved when moving a Navy vessel or troops across the water, and these...

NASA will join the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and high school student teams from the United States and abroad for the fourth annual Zero Robotics SPHERES Challenge Friday, Jan. 11. The event will take place on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass., and be broadcast live on NASA Television beginning at 8:30 a.m. EST. For the competition, NASA will upload software developed by high school students onto Synchronized Position...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA will join the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and high school student teams from the United States and abroad for the fourth annual Zero Robotics SPHERES Challenge Friday, Jan. 11. The event will take place on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass., and be broadcast live on NASA Television beginning at 8:30 a.m. EST. (Logo:...

NEW YORK, Jan. 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Reservoir Labs, Inc. has been awarded a research contract with negotiated options up to $8.7M in DARPA's Power Efficiency Revolution for Embedded Computing Technology (PERFECT) program. Reservoir's goal in the PERFECT program is to help develop computer architectures that improve the power efficiency of embedded computing devices from today's 1 GFLOPS/W to a future 75 GFLOPS/W. This capability is needed for current and next generation...

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online When humanity first built a robot to build cars for us, we thought their determined logic and tireless work ethic would help to create a better automobile. Then we asked robots to perform other monotonous tasks for us, glad to be rid of such boring jobs. Now, we’re making robots humanoid, capable of playing soccer and dancing the popular dances of today’s pop music culture. What’s even more frightening, we’re asking them to...

The award will support the development of high-output, low-input energy beets, optimized for biofuel production. Baltimore, MD (PRWEB) December 11, 2012 Plant Sensory Systems, LLC today announced the award of $1.8 million in funding from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The award will support a three-year program to develop an enhanced energy (sugar) beet, optimized for biofuel production. The beets will be engineered to use fertilizer and...