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DARPA’s Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency — Simulation (RACER-Sim) project is seeking innovations in technologies that bridge the gap from simulation to the real world and significantly reduce the cost of off-road autonomy development. DARPA invites proposals for promising solutions that support these goals.

DARPA’s TRAnsformative DESign (TRADES) program, which began in 2017, set out to develop foundational design tools needed to explore the vast space opened by new materials and additive manufacturing processes commonly called 3D printing. The program recently concluded having successfully developed new mathematics and computational techniques, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, that will allow future designers to create previously unimaginable shapes and structures of interest to defense and commercial manufacturing.

DARPA has executed contract options to continue the Manta Ray project that began in 2020. The effort seeks to demonstrate innovative technologies allowing payload-capable unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) to operate on long-duration, long-range missions in ocean environments. The three prime contractors will be Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation, Martin Defense Group, LLC (formerly Navatek, LLC), and Metron, Inc.

While a multitude of companies are jostling to compete in the emerging electric VTOL air taxi market, it’s very rare to find aircraft designs carrying more than five people. But British multinational giant GKN Aerospace is looking into something much bigger: “park ‘n’ ride” Skybus transports capable of carrying 30 to 50 passengers across congested parts of town, moving affordable public transport into the third dimension.

This initiative is part of the UK’s Future Flight Challenge, which is using some £125 million (US$171 million) of government cash and a further £175 million (US$239 million) from the industrial sector to fund a wide range of projects related to electric aviation, including drone swarm and delivery technologies, air traffic control that can handle a huge influx of autonomous drones and aircraft, eVTOL air taxis, sensor technologies, industrial inspection UAVs and other projects like the pop-up eVTOL airport in Coventry we wrote about yesterday.

Where most passenger-carrying eVTOL projects are envisaged as on-demand Uber-style services connecting individual passengers or small groups with ride-share services at either end, the Skybus project takes a public transport approach, with large birds ferrying significant numbers of people over city routes on fixed schedules.

San Jose-based robotics company Fetch unveiled its latest robot this morning. The PalletTransport1500 is an autonomous bot designed specifically to replace forklift uses in warehouses. The systems, which are designed to pick up and delivery pallets, are capable of sporting payloads of up to 2504 pounds.

The device joins a number of different robotic forklift solutions from various companies, including Toyota. Though Amazon’s own Kiva Systems-produced robots are likely still the best-known pallet moving robotics in the game.

The system was developed with Honeywell’s Intelligrated’s Momentum warehouse software. Fetch, of course, already offers a number of different warehouse robotic solutions, building out a kind of autonomous ecosystem. The company’s systems are notable for their relative flexibility over other full-scale solutions.

On Sunday, February 72021, at 1 p.m. U.S. Pacific Time, the U.S. Transhumanist Party will host a Debate on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Existe…Debate on Artificial General Intelligence and Existential Risk: David J. Kelley and Connor Leahy.


Interested.