It’s a long hike through difficult terrain out to your favorite hunting blind—a trek made worse when you have to lug the season’s equipment and supplies along. But with this autonomous ATV from Cleartrail, you’ll barely have to lift a trigger finger. More »
Lasers, particularly those that set boats ablaze and incinerate incoming missiles, have long been on the Navy’s mind. Today, the Office of Naval Research revealed its latest energy weapon craving: vehicle-mounted lasers that shoot down drones. Dubbed Ground-Based Air Defense Directed Energy On-The-Move, the project is offering private outfits up to $400,000 each to develop such a system that blasts at full power for 120 seconds and juices back up to 80 percent after a 20 minute charge. The beam is required to pack a punch of at least 25 kilowatts, while the ability to ratchet up to 50 kilowatts is optional. Given that kind of power, Wired points out that making such a solution fit in a Humvee is going to be a feat — especially when the Navy says it can’t weigh more than 2,000 pounds and must fit entirely within a vehicle’s cargo area. Have blueprints for a jeep-mountable laser squirreled away in your basement hobby shop? You’ll have to send your application in by 2 PM on April 26th to qualify for the federal cash.
[Image credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery, Flickr]
Filed under: Transportation, Science
Via: Wired
Source: Federal Business Opportunities
Before quadrocopters become Skynet’s roaming recon fleet, they’ll begrudgingly entertain us, and in a recent promotional enterprise, a swarm braved the London “spring” to remind us of the imminent launch of Star Trek: Into Darkness. Over the weekend, drone masters Ars Electronica Futurelab sent a party of 30 LED-tagged AscTec Hummingbirds halfway to Hoth, and used the relative darkness of Earth Hour to set an approximately 300-foot high Star Trek logo twinkling over Tower Bridge. A video of the event can be found below, complete with epic music and movie cut-scenes sure to send even the most Vulcan of trekkers to sickbay with hysteria. If anyone behind the promotion is reading — please, whatever you do, just don’t give them phasers.
Filed under: Robots
Source: Ars Electronica (1), (2)
You have no family; you are a construct, a robot; you were not born; you will not die; you have only the home I give you and learn only the things I teach you. More »
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you sent a metal-cage-enclosed quadrotor soaring between two Tesla coils? Of course you have. And here lies your answer in all its highly dangerous, lightning-spewing, nightmare-inducing glory. More »
In an effort to improve autopilot systems aboard spacecraft, the European Space Agency has released a free iOS app that works with Parrot’s AR Drone and lets amateur pilots practice a simulated docking with the International Space Station. More »
Fan-freakin’-tastic. It wasn’t enough that drones are already watching our every move and capable of raining down missile-locked death strikes. No, we had to give them the ability to swoop and snag items like a goddamn Golden Eagle taking a baby. Everybody duck. More »
There’s still a mysterious black drone in Brooklyn, and the FBI can’t find it. Last week it appeared just 200 feet away from a passenger jet—that’s too close. What if it’d hit it? Bad things. Bad, dangerous things. More »
Sorry, Sushi/Massage Guru at Google: you no longer have the coolest tech job in America. That honor will belong to the future staff at the planned Point Mugu UAV installation in paradisiacal California. Surfing, sunrays, and constant sensor surveillance. And it’s only the beginning. More »
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