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New footage released from the US Navy shows an unmanned drone refueling a fighter jet.
Category: military
Circa 2020 o,.o!
Every robot is, at its heart, a computer that can move. That is true from the largest plane-sized flying machines down to the smallest of controllable nanomachines, small enough to someday even navigate through blood vessels.
New research, published August 26 in Nature, shows that it is possible to build legs into robots mere microns in length. When powered by lasers, these tiny machines can move, and some day, they may save lives in operating rooms or even, possibly, on the battlefield.
This project, funded in part by the Army Research Office and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, demonstrated that, adapting principles from origami, nano-scale legged robots could be printed and then directed.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has recently commissioned three private companies, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics, to develop nuclear fission thermal rockets for use in lunar orbit.
Such a development, if flown, could usher in a new era of spaceflight. That said, it is only one of several exciting avenues in rocket propulsion. Here are some others.
The standard means of propulsion for spacecraft uses chemical rockets. There are two main types: solid-fueled (such as the solid rocket boosters on the Space Shuttle), and liquid-fueled (such as the Saturn V).
Amazon Web Services (AMZN.O) said it will open data centers in Israel, with the announcement coming weeks after Israel signed a deal with AWS and Google for a more than $1 billion project to provide cloud services for its public sector and military.
In April, AWS and Google (GOOGL.O) won a tender for the four phase project known as âNimbusâ. read more
âToday, Amazon Web Services Inc, an Amazon.com company, announced it will open an infrastructure region in Israel in the first half of 2023â, AWS said in a statement on Friday.
Scientists using sound recordings from underwater nuclear bomb detectors have discovered the distinct song of a previously unknown population of pygmy blue whales in the Indian Ocean.
Because it was, 62 years ago, the first fully reusable space vehicle, two stages, both reusable. The same concept of Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo.
X15 made 200 flights at suborbital altitude, 100 km.
Of course X15 was a military spaceplane, nothing like a civilian passengers transportation vehicle, yet the concept is important.
The first project of the Space Shuttle (Krafft Ehricke, early 70âs) was based on the same concept. But then such project was abandoned, in favor of a partially reusable machine, realized in 5 unic pieces.
We could have reusable launch vehicles since 40 years, at least.
Civilization could be well on its way of expansion in the solar system: Earth orbit industries, cislunar economy, asteroid materials use, producing fuel in space⊠topics for an ucronian novel?
Or a topic for reflection, that technology is not an obstacle (as Branson and Musk finally demonstrated), while short-sighted policies and lobbies were huge and heavy burdens for human progressâŠ
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The world is entering a new era of warfare, with artificial intelligence taking center stage. AI is making militaries faster, smarter and more efficient. But if left unchecked, it threatens to destabilize the world.
If hearing the words âmilitary,â âsoldier,â and âimplantâ all in the same sentence conjures images of Jason Bourne, youâre not alone â and with good reason.
The military is currently working with scientists to develop new technology to implant in soldiers. But this time it has less to do with creating superhuman assassins and more to do with quelling jet lag and diarrhea.
In May, researchers from Northwestern University signed a $33 million dollar contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a wireless implantable device that will function as a âliving pharmacyâ for military personnel. Itâs called a living pharmacy because everything the âpatientâ needs can be produced by their own body.
Army researchers have developed a pioneering framework that provides a baseline for the development of collaborative multi-agent systems.
The framework is detailed in the survey paper âSurvey of recent multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithms utilizing centralized training,â which is featured in the SPIE Digital Library. Researchers said the work will support research in reinforcement learning approaches for developing collaborative multi-agent systems such as teams of robots that could work side-by-side with future soldiers.
âWe propose that the underlying information sharing mechanism plays a critical role in centralized learning for multi-agent systems, but there is limited study of this phenomena within the research community,â said Army researcher and computer scientist Dr. Piyush K. Sharma of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. âWe conducted this survey of the state-of-the-art in reinforcement learning algorithms and their information sharing paradigms as a basis for asking fundamental questions on centralized learning for multi-agent systems that would improve their ability to work together.â
Microsoft president: Orwellâs 1984 could happen in 2024.
Tech executives warned that democracy has to win the AI arms race, in a new BBC Panorama.