Hasta La Gadget!

DARPA is looking for input from companies in the electronics industry, researchers, and other interested parties on technology that sounds like something out of a Mission Impossible movie. No, they don’t want exploding sunglasses or anything like that. The research group is looking for electronics that are able to disappear into the environment by dissolving on command.

According to DARPA, after a military battle it’s not uncommon for key electronic devices to be left lying on the battlefield. The fear is that these devices could be picked up by the enemy and repurposed or used to glean intelligence that could harm the United States, its soldiers and allies. DARPA is seeking input on a way to develop electronics that could simply dissolve into the environment on command.

The program is called Vanishing Programmable Resources VAPR. DARPA has issued a special announcement for a Proposers Day could be held before a full solicitation. Participants are asked to conduct basic research into materials, devices, manufacturing, and integration processes as well as design methodology to develop electronics such as an environmental and biomedical sensor that can communicate with a remote user. The key aspect of this is for the electronics to be able to dissolve into an unusable state on command. Last year, researchers showed of self-dissolving electronic circuits which melt after a pre-set amount of time, but offered no on-demand triggering mechanism.

“Commercial off-the-shelf, or COTS, electronics made for everyday purchases are durable and last nearly forever,” said Alicia Jackson, DARPA program manager. “DARPA is looking for a way to make electronics that last precisely as long as they are needed. The breakdown of such devices could be triggered by a signal sent from command or any number of possible environmental conditions, such as temperature.”

The Canadian Space Agency announced a successful test of its newest collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The robot, which has managed to refill a mock satellite in space, on the international space station, may be used in the future to extend the life of satellites currently in space. 

For a long time, laser weapons were the stuff of science fiction, but researchers have able to create viable laser weaponry over the last several years. Boeing and the U.S. Air Force flew the Airborne Laser Testbed for a long time before scrapping the project last year. That massive laser was in the nose of the Boeing 747, was used to destroy missiles in flight, and could be an offensive weapon. DARPA has now announced that it wants to put significantly smaller laser weapons into turrets on jet fighter aircraft next year.

DARPA wants these weapons to be used in defensive situations to destroy incoming missiles. DARPA is working on two weapon systems including the High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS), and Aero-Adaptive/Aero-Optic Beam Control (ABC).

The HELLADS would be a 150-kilowatt laser approximately 10 times smaller and lighter than current airborne laser systems. The project aims to create a laser weighing under 5 kg per kilowatt that could fit into a total space of only 3 m³. The ABC is a weapon that could be mounted on aircraft to shoot down incoming missiles behind an aircraft. It would use technology to allow it to maintain effectiveness while shooting through the turbulent air behind an aircraft in flight.

And if you think that the illustration above seems far-fetched, think again. It’s the rendering that DARPA themselves has been circulating for HELLADS.

[Military Aerospace via Gizmodo via Dvice]

Google made a lot of people excited about the future when the company showed off a concept video for the Project Glass computer. A month after that, a some of us wet our already wet pants some more when the Leap controller was unveiled. And now we have the Meta, which as far as I can tell is a combination of those two products.

According to its press release[PDF], Meta was founded by Meron Gribetz in December 2012 with help from Columbia University Professor Steven Feiner, a computer scientist who specializes in wearable computing, 3D user interfaces and augmented reality, among other things. Most of the company’s 15 employees are also from Columbia University, including Gribetz himself. Whereas Google seems to prefer the use of voice commands for their wearable computer, Meta is putting its money on gesture control, hence the need for a 3D camera.

Like Google, Meta has yet to reveal concrete details about their product. So which future would you rather have? The one where everyone’s talking to the air or the one where we’re all waggling our arms about? Just kidding. The future will obviously contain a lot of both. And people bumping into things.

[via Meta via Geeky Gadgets]

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