Hasta La Gadget!

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has come up with something interesting – a fire extinguisher that works differently from all other fire extinguishers to date. You will not find it froth out white stuff on the other end of the nozzle, as this particular fire extinguisher will rely on the principle of sonic waves as you can see in the video above. The DARPA team arranged a couple of speakers on either side of a liquid fuel flame in order to show the world just how fire can be controlled simply by increasing the power of the acoustic field. Whenever the acoustic field’s power is increased, so too, will the air velocity register a higher figure – which in turn thins the area of the flame where combustion occurs, where in scientific circles is called the “flame boundary.”

The moment the flame boundary area is thinned, life gets much easier to extinguish the flame. Not only that, the acoustics have another job on hand which our eyes are not able to see – it disturbs the pool of fuel in order to create a higher level of fuel vaporization which will help widen the flame. This thins out the flame for it to be less concentrated, and subsequently, cool enough to extinguish. Does this mean the Sonic Tanks in Dune 2 are able to extinguish fires as well? [Press Release]

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: DARPA reveals gigapixel camera, DARPA awards $21.4 million contract to Invincea to make Android more secure,

Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.

While there might not quite have been the epic science news that we had last week, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty going on in the world of Alt. In this installment we get to see how CERN tricks out its offices, how one farmer tries to keep his flock, and learn about how the military will be high-tailing around the planet in just a few years. This is alt / week.

Continue reading Alt-week 7.14.2012: Bleeping sheep and ATLAS art

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Alt-week 7.14.2012: Bleeping sheep and ATLAS art originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The DARPA Tactical Technology Office wants swarms of small spacecraft that would go to space, attach to dead satellites, and use their components to create new working satellites. The idea is fascinating—although it seems too wild to become real anytime soon. More »

Where are the bad guys? The military has eyes and ears everywhere these days, including drones large and tiny, satellites, radar imaging, LIDAR, infrared, thermal and even the enemy’s own cellphones. The problem is how to take all that imaging and create a single picture of the environment. To that end, DARPA and George Mason University in Arlington have created the first Innovation House Project, which will put eight teams together for eight weeks in a “crucible-style” living environment to try to invent new ways of crunching the diverse sensor info. The military’s research arm wants those units to think way off-piste “without fear of failure” to dream up solutions, and will have access to specialists and mentors from the military and academia. Unlike DARPA’s usual challenges which have a grand prize, all teams accepted to the project will receive $30,000 in funding, but groups who go on to survive a four week cut will get an additional $20K. Proposals will be accepted up to July 31 (with no academic credentials needed), and the competition will begin in earnest on September 17. DARPA will get a license of any software created, allowing teams to hold the rights — and hopes to continue the concept down the road, with new themes for team-based research on a tight deadline. So, if you’re a data, imaging or “geospatial” whiz — and don’t mind being locked in a house and put under the brainstorming gun by DARPA — check the PR for all the details.

Continue reading DARPA Innovation House project wants teams to take imaging data, see the big picture

Filed under: Science, Software

DARPA Innovation House project wants teams to take imaging data, see the big picture originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers at DARPA are working on robots with hugely increased power efficiency, chasing human-style actuation that would prolong battery life and significantly extend robotic runtime. The M3 Actuation program has set an ambitious 2,000-percent increase in power-transmission and application in robots, improving performance not only in areas like search & rescue and drones, but advanced prosthetic limbs and other fields.

It’s not just making more efficient motors. According to DARPA, successful teams might look at a combination of “low-loss power modulation, variable recruitment of parallel transducer elements, high-bandwidth variable impedance matching, adaptive inertial and gravitational load cancellation, and high-efficiency power transmission between joints.”

There will be two different tracks of work ongoing simultaneously, one with a more practical focus and another that will look more at the science and engineering behind actuation. The eye-candy is likely to show up in Track 1, where teams will be required to actually outfit physical robotics systems with their creations:

“Track 1 asks performer teams to develop and demonstrate high-efficiency actuation technology that will allow robots similar to the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) platform to have twenty times longer endurance than the DRC GFE when running on untethered battery power (currently only 10-20 minutes). Using Government Furnished Information about the GFE, M3 Actuation performers will have to build a robot that incorporates the new actuation technology” DARPA

DARPA is now inviting proposals from teams that believe they can put together something along those lines. The Maximum Mobility and Manipulation robotics program will culminate in a live competition in December 2013, followed by a second live final in December 2014.

DARPA kickstarts research into robot Viagra is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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