In the scifi TV series Fringe, the government gives a couple geniuses a lab and a mandate to come up with crazy technologies to defend America.
DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is kind of like that, only it has a $3.2 billion annual budget, hundreds of geniuses and it’s real.
A part of the Department of Defense, DARPA was founded in the 1950’s in response to the Soviet Union’s Sputnik program. Since then, DARPA has birthed a collection of revolutionary technologies, including the internet and stealth airplanes.
DARPA’s legal exemptions
Part of what makes DARPA so successful is that it’s exempt from laws that stifle most government agencies. Specifically, DARPA isn’t subject to Title V of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994, which sets up all sorts of red tape for hiring and managing personnel. DARPA also has the option of funding projects through “other transactions,” which is a special power granted by Congress to avoid the red tape normally associated with federal grants.
As a result, DARPA has a largely unrestricted $3.2 billion pot of money to use much like a venture capital firm would, doling it out to high-risk, high-reward projects, expecting a minority of them produce amazing results. Much of the money is granted to civilian firms all over the country who are free to operate their businesses as they please (as long as they produce results), which is why DARPA has been called “100 geniuses connected by a travel agent.”
Current projects
DARPA shoots for revolution, not evolution in technology. That means DARPA is working on some pretty off-the-wall stuff — the kinds of things that sound like science fiction, but aren’t. Here are 12 insane but true DARPA projects currently in the works:
1) Synthetic blood
In HBO’s True Blood series, vampires drink synthetic blood so that they don’t have bother with draining people. We’re soon going to see the real version of that, albeit not for vampires. You see, donating blood is inefficient and problematic (match types, diseases and short shelf life). These problems are especially bad for US soldiers abroad, because most blood they receive is donated in the US and has to be shipped overseas. That’s why DARPA has developed synthetic blood for battlefield applications. In the not too distant future we might think how primitive it was to have people line up to physically donate blood.
2) Sensors that can see underground
Going underground has been a way to hide from the enemy, since, well, the beginning of time. Not anymore. DARPA has developed a gravity sensor that will give pilots a real time view of underground tunnels. Combine this sensor with bunker busting bombs and underground hiding places become a thing of the past.
3) Powered exoskeletons
How much gear soldiers can carry is limited by how much they can physically lift. But what if it wasn’t? Soon soldiers could be wearing super strong exoskeletons that allow them to carry hundreds or even thousands of pounds with ease.
4) America’s manufacturing base 2.0
America’s manufacturing base has pretty much withered away and died compared to our World War II days. Aside from economic implications, this poses a threat to our national security. After all, are we going to have our weapons manufactured in China or South America? But in true DARPA fashion, the agency isn’t just trying to revive American manufacturing circa 1940. It’s investing a billion dollars to come up with new, streamlined, modular ways of manufacturing, powered by the internet and social networks.
5) Robot cyborg insects
Unmanned drones are all the rage, but unfortunately they’re big and enemies can see them. That’s why DARPA wants to turn insects into cyborg weapons. Even cooler, these cyborg insects could be mass produced using 3D printer technology. The implications of this are amazing, from a military and civilian point of view. For example, no one can find Osama Bin Laden because he’s supposedly hiding in a cave that’s hard to access. That’s no problem for an army of 1000 flying bugs! The same technology could be used in civilian rescue applications.
6) Remote controlled A-10 Warthogs
For a soldier, it’s great knowing that you can radio in an air strike. However, it’s not as easy as making a phone call. You have to go through several people, get a plane in the air, and try not to accidentally blow up yourself or your buddies. Wouldn’t it be great if a soldier could simply point and click on a map, and then a remote controlled airplane dropped bombs in exactly the right spot? It could happen. DARPA has a project in the works to use remote controlled A-10 Warthog airplanes for this purpose.
7) Mind-controlled artificial arms
Current prosthetic arms may look advanced, but without the ability control them they’re dead weight. DARPA wants to plug artificial arms into the human brain so that they can be controlled just like a natural arm. The most obvious use here is for amputees, but there are some crazy potential military applications as well, especially if this technology is combined with exoskeletons for soldiers.
8) Cars for blind people
No, this is not a joke. DARPA is looking into technology that could allow blind people to drive by combining non visual sensors (like lasers) with tactile indicators (like a glove that vibrates telling you to turn). While this is a lofty goal, the implications for this technology could drastically increase car safety in years to come, eventually moving us to a kind of car “auto pilot” that renders human drivers unnecessary.
9) A flying submarine
As any comic book super hero already knows, air planes should be able alternate between flying and going under water. DARPA is trying to make a flying submarine (or a submersible plane) a reality. Military applications for such a machine are obvious, but perhaps one day we can also look forward to a civilian flight that includes an underwater tour?
10) Programmable shape-shifting matter
In the movie Terminator 2, Arnold Schwarzenegger explains that a cyborg is made of malleable metal and can form itself into “knives and stabbing objects” (/Austrian accent). DARPA is working on the real thing with programmable shape shifting matter. In its plainest form, such material could be used to change an antenna’s shape for maximum effectiveness depending on location and circumstances. Or in the case of the military, you could make something that looks innocent, like a cupcake, that suddenly changes shape and stabs you in the face.
11) Robots that walk and balance like animals
Although robots have come a long way in the last several decades, they’re still really clumsy. DARPA has changed all that and created what can only be called the creepiest robot in the entire world. This thing looks and act like a headless dog, plus it makes a whirling sound that will give you nightmares. Just look at what happens when a man tries to kick this thing over. Like an abused, docile animal, it simply recovers its balance and continues moving — it’s probably saving up all its rage for when it becomes sentient and murderous.
12) Laser guided bullets
Humans have made amazing progress with bombs over time. We’ve gone from indiscriminate carpet bombing to laser guided, heat seeking, bunker busting “smart” bombs. Bullets, however, are still quite stupid. DARPA wants to make smart bullets that are guided in mid flight. Well it’s about time! If DARPA has its way, that little red laser dot won’t just be a cheesy fixture in 80’s and 90’s movies. It’ll actually guide bullets through wind, rain and humidity to always hit their target.
What will the future hold?
Two of the greatest things about DARPA are that it only goes after projects that seem a little far fetched, and it uses crowd sourcing to find tomorrow’s Einsteins whether they’re in a dingy garage or a state of the art lab. With a ton of money, boundless imagination and an outsourced army of geniuses, who knows what tomorrow will hold.
Thanks, DARPA, for doing your part to make the future look like the movies and thinking of crazy ways to kill people that also turn into useful civilian technologies!
Also:
DARPA inventions: how they were made and what happened to them
What is DARPA and what are some of the technologies it invented?
DARPA, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to give it its full name, is the source of some of the most important technologies upon which our society is built today.
Founded in 1958 as ARPA as a direct response to the launch of Sputnik by the USSR and the start of the Space Race, it’s a petri dish of experimental technology, much of which takes decades to reach to the civilian sphere – and when it does, there’s every chance most people don’t know it originated in DARPA at all.
Here are just 10 of the amazing inventions created by DARPA, how they were made and what’s happened to them.
Probably the best known invention to come out of DARPA is the internet. Indeed, if it weren’t for ARPANET, as the internet’s ancestor was known, you wouldn’t be reading this article right now.
The seeds of ARPANET were sown by JCR Licklider, a psychiatrist and computer scientist who in a 1963 memo to colleagues at ARPA described the concept of an “Intergalactic Computer Network”, where many computers are networked together. While he acknowledged some of the limitations of existing programming languages and technology to create such a network, Licklider managed to persuade fellow ARPA scientists Ivan Sutherland and Bob Taylor of the importance of developing the technology.
In 1966, funding was secured to create a computer network and three years later, ARPANET truly came online. It wasn’t until the creation of the World Wide Web at CERN in Geneva in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee, thought, that the internet really started to explode from the world of research institutions and some businesses into the ubiquitous utility it is today.
When you’re punching a destination into a navigation app on your phone or a dedicated SatNav system and following its directions, you probably don’t give much thought to how it works. But the technology behind it has come a long way since it started its journey at ARPA.
The idea of using a constellation of satellites for navigation and tracking stretches all the way back to the 1940s, but the GPS project proper was launched in 1973. For the first decade of its existence, it was only available to the United States military, but when Korean Airlines flight was shot down in 1983 after accidentally straying into the airspace of the USSR, the technology was made freely available for civilian use. Today, it’s still the most widely used satellite navigation system in the world, although the EU’s Galileo satellite system, which went live in 2016, hopes to offer an alternative.
Even if you don’t know its name, you have almost certainly seen videos of BigDog, the quadruped robot created by Boston Dynamics. Throughout its history, DARPA has funded private enterprises to research technologies with potential military applications, and this unsettling, headless creature is one such effort.
BigDog was designed to carry heavy loads for military ground units travelling on foot and its four-legged build gave it stability, enabling it to navigate uneven terrain more easily. By all accounts, it was quite good at all these things, but it had one terminal flaw – it was too loud as it moved around, which in a combat situation could give away the location of the humans it was accompanying. And so BigDog has gone to live on a farm with all the other not-fit-for-purpose military dog robots.
If you thought a headless dog robot was strange, the research DARPA has done into insect sentinels is even weirder. In 2006, the organisation announced it was looking for researchers who would help it find a way to implant technology into an insect’s body while it’s in its pupa, thus turning it into a cyborg.
Successful entrants had to deliver the insect to within 5m of a target, using either remote control or GPS – and the results are predictably horrifying and somewhat impractical. While it’s unclear if DARPA ever learnt anything useful from the initiative and indeed one researcher told New Scientist he didn’t think cyborg insects would ever become fully-fledged surveillance instruments as it’s impossible to create a power pack that will run the electronics for a long enough time without also being too heavy for the insect to move while wearing it.
Some 13 years later, another call was put out involving insects, this time with the intention of creating conscious robots by mapping the creatures’ brains. In a January 2019 the agency published a brief for artificial intelligence exploration (AIE) proposals involving insects, explaining that their brains could solve the problem of how much energy and time it takes to train increasingly complex AI systems. It also touched on the fact these animals have subjective experiences, and that researching this particular aspect of insect brains “could lead to capability of inference, prediction, generalization and abstraction of problems in systematic or entirely news ways in order to find solutions to compelling problems".
The project has in the intervening year and a half become µBRAIN
Moving away from DARPA’s creepier creations and investigations, it is also behind something we’re all familiar with – the graphical user interface, or GUI (pronounced ‘gooey’), and mouse.
This technology is almost certainly much older than most people realise, having been created by Douglas Engelbart in the 1960s, who gave the first public demo of the technology in 1968. It was rather more basic than what we think of as a computer interface now, but it laid the foundations for the desktop metaphor we use on our computers today, and the swipeable interface on smart devices.
Even if you’ve never used the Tor browser, you’ve probably heard of it – often in the context of cyber crime. But the technology behind Tor – which stands for ‘the onion routing’ – came from DARPA.
Research into onion routing, so named because every message sent is wrapped in layers of encryption, began in the mid-1990s at the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) with the objective of finding a way to secure US intelligence communications online. In 1997, it attracted funding from DARPA specifically focused on the robustness aspects of onion routing.
Research continued on the project, papers were published throughout the decade on various aspects of its development, and a working prototype of onion routing was created. In 1999, however, all work on it was suspended. This may sound nefarious at first, but in reality, the majority of principal researchers had left the ONR and no more funding was made available – that is until 2001, when DARPA resumed investment, albeit from a different funding pot than had been used in the 1990s. Ultimately, in October 2003, the Tor network was deployed and Tor code released under the MIT free and open license. Anyone can download it and start using it straight away, although don’t expect the Tor Browser to be quite as speedy as your regular browser.
The Human Universal Load Carrier is an exoskeleton intended to help soldiers carry a load of up to 90kg at a speed of up to 10mph.
Shortened to HULC (and pronounced ‘hulk’), the invention debuted on the public stage in 2009 and licensed by Lockheed Martin. Unfortunately, however, the project has been deemed a failure – while it works technically, it was found to restrict the wearer’s movements in some cases and actually increased the strain on muscles. Nevertheless, Lockheed Martin, which was HULC’s primary developer, is looking at other applications, such as using it as the basis of a wearable sensor array for soldiers or for medical or industrial applications in the civilian sphere.
Yes, that Siri. Apple’s digital virtual assistant started life as a DARPA project in the early 2000s, known as CALO – ostensibly an acronym for Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes, but also a nod to the Latin word for a soldier’s servant.
The name is no accident, as the research that spawned it originally focused on providing better technology to soldiers in the field via a technology that could learn from experience, take instructions, explain what it’s doing and reflect on the experience it just had.
The CALO project lasted five years, from 2003 to 2008. Various technologies were spun out of it, including Siri, which was launched on the iOS App Store in February 2010 and acquired by Apple just two months later. Just over a year later, it was integrated into the iPhone 4s and is now a key part of Apple’s device ecosystem.
HAARP, or the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program to give it its full name, is a scientific research station and magnet for conspiracy theories. Located in Gakona, Alaska, this joint project between the US Air Force, US Navy, DARPA and University of Alaska Fairbanks investigates the very highest layer of earth’s atmosphere, the ionosphere.
Work began on HAARP back in 1993, although the current facility dates from 2007. It uses high frequency radio waves directed at the ionosphere to glean insights both about the layer itself, but also the effects it has on radio communications and how to mitigate them. It’s also looked into other atmospheric events, though, like the creation of plasma trails by lightning.
The military withdrew from the project and the facility was shut down in 2014. While the original plan was to dismantle it, it was handed over to the University of Alaska Fairbanks completely, which now allows researchers to use it on a pay-per-use basis.
In the 1980s, DARPA, the US Navy and military hardware manufacturer Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin) came together to develop an experimental stealth boat.
DARPA was no stranger to creating stealth vehicles, having funded the creation of several stealth planes such as the B-2 Spirit bomber and F-117 Nighthawk fighter, which was also a collaboration with Lockheed. But this was the first attempt at creating a stealth boat that it had been involved in.
The result of the project was the Sea Shadow (IX-529), a twin-hulled ship that was described by Mercury News as looking like “Darth Vader’s personal yacht”.
It could hold a crew of 12 (plus a microwave, fridge and small table), and was seaworthy even in very rough seas. And while official reports are hard to come by, it seems it was also able to avoid radar detection.
But it was only ever an experiment and as such the Sea Shadow had probably the most ignoble end of all the inventions on our list, however. The US Navy originally tried to sell it to the highest bidder in 2006… only there were no bidders. Ultimately, the decision was taken to sell it for scrap instead and it was eventually purchased and dismantled in 2012.
Also:
More DARPAs Projects
1.100G program The 100G program is exploring high-order modulation and spatial multiplexing techniques to achieve the 100 Gb/s capacity at ranges of 200 km air-to-air and 100 km air-to-ground from a high-altitude (e.g. 60,000 ft.) aerial platform. The program is leveraging the characteristics of millimeter wave (mmW) frequencies to produce spectral efficiencies at or above 20 bits-per-second per Hz. Computationally efficient signal processing algorithms are also being developed to meet size, weight, and power (SWaP) limitations of host platforms, which will primarily be high-altitude, long-endurance aerial platforms.
2.ACCESS
The ultimate goal of the DARPA Accelerated Computation for Efficient Scientific Simulation (ACCESS) is to demonstrate new, specialized benchtop technology that can solve large problems in complex physical systems on the hour timescale, compared to existing methods that require full cluster-scale supercomputing resources and take weeks to months
3.Active Social Engineering Defense
This one especially interesting because the definition of "attacker" could easily shift to "dissenter" enabling complete control over the currently unregulated spread of politically inconvenient ideas through the internet
The Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED) program aims to develop the core technology to enable the capability to automatically elicit information from a malicious adversary in order to identify, disrupt, and investigate social engineering attacks. If successful, the ASED technology will do this by mediating communications between users and potential attackers, actively detecting attacks and coordinating investigations to discover the identity of the attacker.
4.Advanced Plant Technologies
Now you will have to be suspicious of new weeds popping up your backyard
The Advanced Plant Technologies (APT) program seeks to develop plants capable of serving as next-generation, persistent, ground-based sensor technologies to protect deployed troops and the homeland by detecting and reporting on chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) threats. Such biological sensors would be effectively energy-independent, increasing their potential for wide distribution, while reducing risks associated with deployment and maintenance of traditional sensors. These technologies could also potentially support humanitarian operations by, for example, detecting unexploded ordnance in post-conflict settings. DARPA’s technical vision for APT is to harness plants’ innate mechanisms for sensing and responding to environmental stimuli, extend that sensitivity to a range of signals of interest, and engineer discreet response mechanisms that can be remotely monitored using existing ground-, air-, or space-based hardware.
5.ARES This one has a neat picture
https://imgur.com/a/no7OHl2 ARES is a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) flight module designed to operate as an unmanned platform capable of transporting a variety of payloads. The ARES VTOL flight module is designed to have its own power system, fuel, digital flight controls and remote command-and-control interfaces. Twin tilting ducted fans would provide efficient hovering and landing capabilities in a compact configuration, with rapid conversion to high-speed cruise flight.
6.ALASA
The goal of DARPA’s Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (ALASA) program is to develop a significantly less expensive approach for routinely launching small satellites, with a goal of at least threefold reduction in costs compared to current military and U.S. commercial launch costs. Currently, small satellite payloads cost more than $30,000 per pound to launch, and must share a launcher with other satellites. ALASA seeks to propel 100-pound satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) within 24 hours of call-up, all for less than $1 million per launch.
7.Nanoscale Products
The A2P program was conceived to deliver scalable technologies for assembly of nanometer- to micron-scale components—which frequently possess unique characteristics due to their small size—into larger, human-scale systems. The goal of the A2P program is to achieve never-before-seen functionality by using scalable processes to assemble fully 3-dimensional devices that include nanometer- to micron-scale components.
8.ADEPT
The ADEPT program’s four thrusts cover simple-to-use, on-demand diagnostics for medical decision-making and accurate threat-tracking; novel methods for rapidly manufacturing new types of vaccines with increased potency; novel tools to engineer mammalian cells for targeted drug delivery and in vivo diagnostics; and novel methods to impart near-immediate immunity to an individual using antibodies.
9.Battlefield Medicine
the Pharmacy on Demand (PoD) and Biologically-derived Medicines on Demand (Bio-MOD) initiatives. The combined efforts seek to develop miniaturized device platforms and techniques that can produce multiple small-molecule active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and therapeutic proteins in response to specific battlefield threats and medical needs as they arise. PoD research is aimed at developing and demonstrating the capability to manufacture multiple APIs of varying chemical complexity using shelf-stable precursors, while Bio-MOD research is focused on developing novel, flexible methodologies for genetic engineering and modification of microbial strains, mammalian cell lines, and cell-free systems to synthesize multiple protein-based therapeutics
10.BRICS
The Biological Robustness in Complex Settings (BRICS) program aims to transform engineered microbial biosystems into reliable, cost-effective strategic resources for the Department of Defense (DoD), enabling future applications in the areas of intelligence, readiness, and force protection. Examples include the identification of the geographical provenance of objects; protection of critical systems and infrastructure against corrosion, biofouling, and other damage; sensing of hazardous compounds; and efficient, on-demand bio-production of novel coatings, fuels, and drugs.
11.Bigs
The Big Mechanism program aims to develop technology to read research abstracts and papers to extract pieces of causal mechanisms, assemble these pieces into more complete causal models, and reason over these models to produce explanations. The domain of the program is cancer biology with an emphasis on signaling pathways. Although the domain of the Big Mechanism program is cancer biology, the overarching goal of the program is to develop technologies for a new kind of science in which research is integrated more or less immediately—automatically or semi-automatically—into causal, explanatory models of unprecedented completeness and consistency. Cancer pathways are just one example of causal, explanatory models.
12.Blue Wolf
Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) have inherent operational and tactical advantages such as stealth and surprise. UUV size, weight and volume are constrained by the handling, launch and recovery systems on their host platforms, however, and UUV range is limited by the amount of energy available for propulsion and the power required for a given underwater speed. Current state-of-the-art energy sources are limited by safety and certification requirements for host platforms. The Blue Wolf program seeks to develop and demonstrate an integrated UUV capable of operating at speed-range combinations previously unachievable on current representative platforms, while retaining traditional volume and weight fractions for payloads and electronics.
13.CRASH
The Clean-Slate Design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts (CRASH) program will pursue innovative research into the design of new computer systems that are highly resistant to cyber-attack, can adapt after a successful attack to continue rendering useful services, learn from previous attacks how to guard against and cope with future attacks, and can repair themselves after attacks have succeeded. Exploitable vulnerabilities originate from a handful of known sources (e.g., memory safety); they remain because of deficits in tools, languages and hardware that could address and prevent vulnerabilities at the design, implementation and execution stages. Often, making a small change in one of these stages can greatly ease the task in another. The CRASH program will encourage such cross layer co-design and participation from researchers in any relevant area.
14.CWC
The Communicating with Computers (CwC) program aims to enable symmetric communication between people and computers in which machines are not merely receivers of instructions but collaborators, able to harness a full range of natural modes including language, gesture and facial or other expressions. For the purposes of the CwC program, communication is understood to be the sharing of complex ideas in collaborative contexts.
15.SocialSim
A simulation of the spread and evolution of online information, if accurate and at-scale, could enable a deeper and more quantitative understanding of adversaries’ use of the global information environment than is currently possible using existing approaches. At present, the U.S. Government employs small teams of experts to speculate how information may spread online. While these activities provide some insight, they take considerable time to orchestrate and execute, the accuracy with which they represent real-world online behavior is unknown, and their scale (in terms of the size and granularity with which populations are represented) is such that they can represent only a fraction of the real world. High-fidelity (i.e., accurate, at-scale) computational simulation of the spread and evolution of online information would support efforts to analyze strategic disinformation campaigns by adversaries, deliver critical information to local populations during disaster relief operations, and could potentially contribute to other critical missions in the online information domain.
16.Satellite Repair
Recent technological advances have made the longstanding dream of on-orbit robotic servicing of satellites a near-term possibility. The potential advantages of that unprecedented capability are enormous. Instead of designing their satellites to accommodate the harsh reality that, once launched, their investments could never be repaired or upgraded, satellite owners could use robotic vehicles to physically inspect, assist, and modify their on-orbit assets. That could significantly lower construction and deployment costs while dramatically extending satellite utility, resilience, and reliability.
17.Deep Exploration
Automated, deep natural-language processing (NLP) technology may hold a solution for more efficiently processing text information and enabling understanding connections in text that might not be readily apparent to humans. DARPA created the Deep Exploration and Filtering of Text (DEFT) program to harness the power of NLP. Sophisticated artificial intelligence of this nature has the potential to enable defense analysts to efficiently investigate orders of magnitude more documents so they can discover implicitly expressed, actionable information contained within them.
ElectRX The Electrical Prescriptions (ElectRx) program aims to support military operational readiness by reducing the time to treatment, logistical challenges, and potential off-target effects associated with traditional medical interventions for a wide range of physical and mental health conditions commonly faced by our warfighters. ElectRx seeks to deliver non-pharmacological treatments for pain, general inflammation, post-traumatic stress, severe anxiety, and trauma that employ precise, closed-loop, non-invasive modulation of the patient’s peripheral nervous system.
19.Engineered Living Materials
The Engineered Living Materials (ELM) program seeks to revolutionize military logistics and construction in remote, austere, high-risk, and/or post-disaster environments by developing living biomaterials that combine the structural properties of traditional building materials with attributes of living systems, including the ability to rapidly grow in situ, self-repair, and adapt to the environment. Living materials could solve existing challenges associated with the construction and maintenance of built environments, and introduce new capabilities to craft smart infrastructure that dynamically responds to its surroundings
20.Enhanced Attribution
The Enhanced Attribution program aims to make currently opaque malicious cyber adversary actions and individual cyber operator attribution transparent by providing high-fidelity visibility into all aspects of malicious cyber operator actions and to increase the government’s ability to publicly reveal the actions of individual malicious cyber operators without damaging sources and methods. The program will develop techniques and tools for generating operationally and tactically relevant information about multiple concurrent independent malicious cyber campaigns, each involving several operators, and the means to share such information with any of a number of interested parties.
21.EXACALIBUR
Handheld Laser guns yo
The DARPA Excalibur program will develop coherent optical phased array technologies to enable scalable laser weapons that are 10 times lighter and more compact than existing high-power chemical laser systems. The optical phased array architecture provides electro-optical systems with the same mission flexibility and performance enhancements that microwave phased arrays provide for RF systems and a multifunction Excalibur array may also perform laser radar, target designation, laser communications, and airborne-platform self protection tasks.
22.Xsolids
Materials with superior strength, density and resiliency properties are important for the harsh environments in which Department of Defense platforms, weapons and their components operate. Recent scientific advances have opened up new possibilities for material design in the ultrahigh pressure regime (up to three million times higher than atmospheric pressure). Materials formed under ultrahigh pressure, known as extended solids, exhibit dramatic changes in physical, mechanical and functional properties and may offer significant improvements to armor, electronics, propulsion and munitions systems in any aerospace, ground or naval platform.
23.GREMLINS
DARPA has launched the Gremlins program. Named for the imaginary, mischievous imps that became the good luck charms of many British pilots during World War II, the program envisions launching groups of UASs from existing large aircraft such as bombers or transport aircraft—as well as from fighters and other small, fixed-wing platforms—while those planes are out of range of adversary defenses. When the gremlins complete their mission, a C-130 transport aircraft would retrieve them in the air and carry them home, where ground crews would prepare them for their next use within 24 hours.
24.HAPTIX
HAPTIX builds on prior DARPA investments in the Reliable Neural-Interface Technology (RE-NET) program, which created novel neural interface systems that overcame previous sensor reliability issues to now last for the lifetime of the patient. A key focus of HAPTIX is on creating new technologies to interface permanently and continuously with the peripheral nerves in humans. HAPTIX technologies are being designed to tap into the motor and sensory signals of the arm to allow users to control and sense the prosthesis via the same neural signaling pathways used for intact limbs. Direct access to these natural control signals will, if successful, enable more natural, intuitive control of complex hand movements, and the addition of sensory feedback will further improve hand functionality by enabling users to sense grip force and hand posture. Sensory feedback may also provide important psychological benefits such as improving prosthesis “embodiment” and reducing the phantom limb pain that is suffered by approximately 80 percent of amputees.
25.IVN
The IVN Diagnostics (IVN:Dx) effort aims to develop a generalized in vivo platform that provides continuous physiological monitoring for the warfighter. Specifically, IVN:Dx investigates technologies that incorporate implantable nanoplatforms composed of bio-compatible, nontoxic materials; in vivo sensing of small and large molecules of biological interest; multiplexed detection of analytes at clinically relevant concentrations; and external interrogation of the nanoplatforms without using implanted electronics for communication. The IVN Therapeutics (IVN:Tx) effort seeks unobtrusive nanoplatforms for rapidly treating disease in warfighters. This program is pursuing treatments that increase safety and minimize the dose required for clinically relevant efficacy; limit off-target effects; limit immunogenicity; increase effectiveness by targeting delivery to specific tissues and/or uptake by cells of interest; increase bioavailability; knock down medically relevant molecular target(s); and increase resistance to degradation. If successful, such platforms will enable prevention and treatment of military-relevant illnesses such as infections caused by multi-drug-resistant organisms.
26.MemeX
DARPA has launched the Memex program. Memex seeks to develop software that advances online search capabilities far beyond the current state of the art. The goal is to invent better methods for interacting with and sharing information, so users can quickly and thoroughly organize and search subsets of information relevant to their individual interests. The technologies developed in the program would provide the mechanisms for improved content discovery, information extraction, information retrieval, user collaboration and other key search functions.
27.Light-matter Interactions
Recent advances in our understanding of light-matter interactions, often with patterned and resonant structures, reveal nascent concepts for new interactions that may impact many applications. Examples of these novel phenomena include interactions involving active media, symmetry, non-reciprocity, and linear/nonlinear resonant coupling effects. Insights regarding the origins of these interactions have the potential to transform our understanding of how to control electromagnetic waves and design for new light-matter interactions. The goal of NLM is to bring together and integrate these emerging phenomena with fundamental models that can describe and predict new functionality. These models will provide design tools and delineate the performance limits of new engineered light-matter interactions. Important applications to be addressed in the program include synthesizing new material structures for sources, non-reciprocal behavior, parametric phenomena, limiters, electromagnetic drives, and energy harvesting.
28.NESD
The Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program seeks to develop high-resolution neurotechnology capable of mitigating the effects of injury and disease on the visual and auditory systems of military personnel. In addition to creating novel hardware and algorithms, the program conducts research to understand how various forms of neural sensing and actuation might improve restorative therapeutic outcomes. The focus of the program is development of advanced neural interfaces that provide high signal resolution, speed, and volume data transfer between the brain and electronics, serving as a translator for the electrochemical language used by neurons in the brain and the ones and zeros that constitute the language of information technology. The program aims to develop an interface that can read 106 neurons, write to 105 neurons, and interact with 103 neurons full-duplex, a far greater scale than is possible with existing neurotechnology.
29.Neuro - FAST
Military personnel control sophisticated systems, experience extraordinary stress, and are subject to injury of the brain. DARPA created the Neuro Function, Activity, Structure, and Technology (Neuro-FAST) program to begin to address these challenges by combining innovative neurotechnology with an advanced understanding of the brain. Using a multidisciplinary approach that combines data processing, mathematical modeling, and novel optical interfaces, the program seeks to open new pathways for understanding and treating brain injury, enable unprecedented visualization and decoding of brain activity, and build sophisticated tools for communicating with the brain.
30.PHOENIX
Satlets: A new low-cost, modular satellite architecture that can scale almost infinitely. Satlets are small independent modules (roughly 15 pounds/7 kg) that incorporate essential satellite functionality (power supplies, movement controls, sensors, etc.). Satlets share data, power and thermal management capabilities. They also physically aggregate (attach together) in different combinations that would provide capabilities to accomplish a range of diverse space missions with any type, size or shape payload. Because they are modular, they can be produced on an assembly line at low cost and integrated very quickly with different payloads. DARPA is presently focused on validating the technical concept of satlets in LEO.
Payload Orbital Delivery (POD) system: The POD is a standardized mechanism designed to safely carry a wide variety of separable mass elements to orbit—including payloads, satlets and electronics—aboard commercial communications satellites. This approach would take advantage of the tempo and “hosted payloads” services that commercial satellites now provide while enabling lower-cost delivery to GEO.
31:Revolutionary Prostetics
Revolutionizing Prosthetics performer teams developed two anthropomorphic, advanced, modular prototype prosthetic arm systems, including sockets, which offer users increased dexterity, strength, and range of motion over traditional prosthetic limbs. The program has developed neurotechnology to enable direct neural control of these systems, as well as non-invasive means of control. DARPA is also studying the restoration of sensation, connecting sensors to the arm systems and returning haptic feedback from the arm directly back to volunteers’ brains. The LUKE Arm system was originally developed for DARPA by DEKA Research and Development Corporation. The modular, battery-powered arm enables dexterous arm and hand movement through a simple, intuitive control system that allows users to move multiple joints simultaneously. Years of testing and optimization in collaboration with the Department of Veterans Affairs led to clearance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May 2014 and creation of a commercial-scale manufacturer, Mobius Bionics, in July 2016. In June 2017, the first two LUKE Arm systems were prescribed to veterans. The Modular Prosthetic Limb, developed for DARPA by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, is a more complex hand and arm system designed primarily as a research tool. It is used to test direct neural control of a prosthesis. In studies, volunteers living with paralysis have demonstrated multi-dimensional control of the hand and arm using electrode arrays placed on their brains, as well as restoration of touch sensation via a closed-loop interface connecting the brain with haptic sensors in the arm system.
32.SAFEGENES
Safe Genes performer teams work across three primary technical focus areas to develop tools and methodologies to control, counter, and even reverse the effects of genome editing—including gene drives—in biological systems across scales. First, researchers are developing the genetic circuitry and genome editing machinery for robust, spatial, temporal, and reversible control of genome editing activity in living systems. Second, researchers are developing small molecules and molecular strategies to provide prophylactic and treatment solutions that prevent or limit genome editing activity and protect the genome integrity of organisms and populations. Third, researchers are developing “genetic remediation” strategies that eliminate unwanted engineered genes from a broad range of complex population and environmental contexts to restore systems to functional and genetic baseline states.
33:TNT
The Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program supports improved, accelerated training of military personnel in multifaceted and complex tasks. The program is investigating the use of non-invasive neurotechnology in combination with training to boost the neurochemical signaling in the brain that mediates neural plasticity and facilitates long-term retention of new cognitive skills. If successful, TNT technology would apply to a wide range of defense-relevant needs, including foreign language learning, marksmanship, cryptography, target discrimination, and intelligence analysis, improving outcomes while reducing the cost and duration of the Defense Department’s extensive training regimen. TNT focuses on a specific kind of learning—cognitive skills training. The premise is that during optimal times in the training process, precise activation of peripheral nerves through stimulation can boost the release of brain chemicals such as acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine that promote and strengthen neuronal connections in the brain. These so-called neuromodulators play a role in regulating synaptic plasticity, the process by which connections between neurons change to improve brain function during learning. By combining peripheral neurostimulation with conventional training practices, the TNT program seeks to leverage endogenous neural circuitry to enhance learning by facilitating tuning of the neural networks responsible for cognitive functions.
34:SD2
The Synergistic Discovery and Design (SD2) program aims to develop data-driven methods to accelerate scientific discovery and robust design in domains that lack complete models. Engineers regularly use high-fidelity simulations to create robust designs in complex domains such as aeronautics, automobiles, and integrated circuits. In contrast, robust design remains elusive in domains such as synthetic biology, neuro-computation, and polymer chemistry due to the lack of high-fidelity models. SD2 seeks to develop tools to enable robust design despite the lack of complete scientific models.
35:SeeMe
DARPA’s SeeMe program aims to give mobile individual US warfighters access to on-demand, space-based tactical information in remote and beyond- line-of-sight conditions. If successful, SeeMe will provide small squads and individual teams the ability to receive timely imagery of their specific overseas location directly from a small satellite with the press of a button — something that’s currently not possible from military or commercial satellites. The program seeks to develop a constellation of small “disposable” satellites, at a fraction of the cost of airborne systems, enabling deployed warfighters overseas to hit ‘see me’ on existing handheld devices to receive a satellite image of their precise location within 90 minutes. DARPA plans SeeMe to be an adjunct to unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology, which provides local and regional very-high resolution coverage but cannot cover extended areas without frequent refueling. SeeMe aims to support warfighters in multiple deployed overseas locations simultaneously with no logistics or maintenance costs beyond the warfighters’ handheld devices.
36.StarNET
Working together, DARPA, along with companies from the semiconductor and defense industries—Applied Materials, Global Foundries, IBM, Intel, Micron, Raytheon, Texas Instruments and United Technologies—have established the Semiconductor Technology Advanced Research Network (STARnet). This effort builds a large multi-university research community to look beyond current evolutionary directions to make discoveries that drive technology innovation beyond what can be imagined for electronics today. The universities are organized into six centers, each focused on a specific challenge.
Function Accelerated nanomaterial Engineering (FAME) focuses on nonconventional materials and devices incorporating nanostructures with quantum-level properties to enable analog, logic and memory devices for beyond-binary computation.
Center for Spintronic Materials, Interfaces and Novel Architectures (C-SPIN) focuses onelectron spin-based memory and computation to overcome the power, performance and architectural constraints of conventional CMOS-based devices.
Systems on Nanoscale Information fabriCs (SONIC) explores a drastic shift in the model of computation and communication from a deterministic digital foundation to a statistical one.
Center for Low Energy Systems Technology (LEAST) pursues low power electronics. For this purpose it addresses nonconventional materials and quantum-engineered devices, and projects implementation in novel integrated circuits and computing architectures.
The Center for Future Architectures Research (C-FAR) investigates highly parallel computing implemented in nonconventional computing systems, but based on current CMOS integrated circuit technology.
The TerraSwarm Research Center (TerraSwarm) focuses on the challenge of developing technologies that provide innovative, city-scale capabilities via the deployment of distributed applications on shared swarm platforms.
37.Z-Man
The Z-Man programs aims to develop biologically inspired climbing aids to enable warfighters to scale vertical walls constructed from typical building materials, while carrying a full combat load, and without the use of ropes or ladders. Geckos, spiders and small animals are the inspiration behind the Z-Man program. These creatures scale vertical surfaces using unique systems that exhibit strong reversible adhesion via van der Waals forces or hook-into-surface asperities. Z-Man seeks to build synthetic versions of these biological systems, optimize them for efficient human climbing and use them as novel climbing aids.
