They wouldn’t make a robot that could kill us with giant concrete blocks:

Holy sh*t, did you see that? Remind me never to face off against BigDog in a construction yard.

[h/t: Reddit]

The idea is to use hide unmanned “risers” in deep-sea capsules for years before they will be needed. Once activated, the hibernating systems will rise (or “fall upward” as agency terminology puts it) to fill gaps in U.S. Military ocean oversight and “deliver action at a distance.”

“The goal is to support the Navy with distributed technologies anywhere, anytime over large maritime areas,” said Andy Coon, DARPA program manager. “If we can do this rapidly, we can get close to the areas we need to affect, or become widely distributed without delay. To make this work, we need to address technical challenges like extended survival of nodes under extreme ocean pressure, communications to wake-up the nodes after years of sleep, and efficient launch of payloads to the surface.”

DARPA is currently seeking design proposals for the “risers,” the payloads they will contain, and the communications technology to them. The agency is hoping to work with deep-ocean engineering communities to develop the technology. It is looking for experts in unmanned platforms, distributed sensors, networking, sensor packaging, information operations, electronic warfare, and anti-submarine warfare.

According to DARPA, the four-kilometer or more depth of over half of the world’s oceans will provide these new installations with “cheap stealth.” However, the agency also stressed that the program will not specifically be a weapons program, as the great depths also make retrieval costs expensive. Instead of weapons, the “riser” would hold “a range of non-lethal but useful capabilities such as situational awareness, disruption, deception, networking, rescue, or any other mission that benefits from being pre-distributed and hidden.” One example they cite is unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly called drones, which could sit in the ocean until called to rise to the surface and deploy for aerial reconnaissance.

“We are simply offering an alternative path to realize these missions without requiring legacy ships and aircraft to launch the technology, and without growing the reach and complexity of unmanned platforms,” said Coon.

Here’s the full rundown of the new enhancements made to the LS3 according to DARPA:

Working with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL), researchers from DARPA’s LS3 program demonstrated new advances in the robot’s control, stability and maneuverability, including “Leader Follow” decision making, enhanced roll recovery, exact foot placement over rough terrain, the ability to maneuver in an urban environment, and verbal command capability.

It’s reassuring that the robot still follows human command, but DARPA really needs to work on the hellish noises that emerge from this particular robot. Sure, it may scare enemy combatants when it’s eventually used out in the field, but researchers can at least have it make a more pleasant noise when it inevitably turns on its masters and begins killing humans.

The video does, however, show a key weakness of the LS3. It’s terrible on hills and will fall over if it loses its footing. It takes it a while to get back up giving humans ample time to run away before it can start its killing spree again.

The sound in this one really doesn’t make it any less scary:

Even the game of Simon can’t make this less creepy:

More of this:

Yes, they should definitely be more Cheetah-like:

They should definitely be able to creep (or stomp terrifyingly, rather) up stairs:

Yes. Even more Cheetah-like:

With new capabilities. Somehow scarier when it comes jogging out of the brush:

No obstacle shall stand in the way:

More scary (and awesome) robots here.

“To maneuver over and around the obstacles, the robot exercises capabilities including autonomous decision-making, dismounted mobility and dexterity,” DARPA says in the YouTube description for the clip.

The challenge kicked off on Wednesday, and is scheduled to run for about 27 months. Events are planned for June 2013, December 2013 and December 2014.

DARPA showed off their robotic pack mule back in February as a test concept. The robot is designed to carry heavy loads over long treks. It will be great for soldiers who won’t have to carry as much equipment when they’re marching in the field. It won’t be great once the thing gets a taste for blood and starts piling hundreds of bodies on its back.

The robotic mule has far more natural movement than its predecessor. It’s not slipping as much on tough terrain either. The robot can also get back up after being knocked over. Naturally, this means that the robot mule can now make it up into the mountains where the last remnants of humanity are hiding.

Robotic apocalypse predictions aside, DARPA is doing some amazing work. These robots could be used in rescue operations where the terrain is too rocky for humans to climb. Animals have already shown to be better at us when climbing mountains and DARPA’s robot mule may be our answer to nature’s challenge.

In a call for contractors, DARPA lists their newest project as “Forecasting Dynamic Group Behavior in Social Media.” In essence, the military wants a tool that can automatically comb through social networks to predict terrorism. They believe that terrorists are using sites like Facebook as recruiting tools.

Here’s how DARPA wants the development of the system to progress:

PHASE I:
Task 1: Design and prove the feasibility of a system that can track groups and their state changes in social media.

Task 2: Research key indicators of group interactions, including competition, recruitment activities, and effects of events and topics on group structure changes.

PHASE II:
Task 1: Design and develop a system that learns dynamics of group behavior and inter- and intra-group interactions in an unsupervised manner based upon design and innovation developed in Phase I.

Task 2: Demonstrate the system on a social media dataset containing >1K groups, >100K postings/day, and >1M members. Achieve high accuracy (90%) of detecting group state changes, activities, conflicts, and competitions.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Successful development of the prototype capability would be of great interest to industrial espionage prevention specialists, law enforcement, market analysts, and polling organizations. This capability would be applicable to a broad range of tactical as well as strategic military operations.

At the moment, this is just a proposal. The applications for stopping terrorism and law enforcement would certainly meet with backlast, but it makes sense. There are some groups who have used social media to recruit and predicting movement via social media would give the military an advantage.

The part that should have you concerned is the non-military applications. DARPA lists “market analysts and polling organizations” as two potential areas the technology could be applied. It’s no secret that a lot of our modern inventions were created for the military first, but this is one of those proposed invention that shouldn’t be put in the hands of civilian agencies without certain assurances.

Companies like Google already track certain behavior and tailor ads towards you. Marketers would pay millions for technology that could detect even the slightest change of behavior in your social media or other online activity. All-encompassing knowledge of your behavior in social media should be between you and your friends – not a lifeless computer that converts human interaction into a spreadsheet.

I have no doubt in my mind that such an application could be used for the safety and protection of innocent civilians. There is a need for better detection of crime, but there’s no need to put the privacy of citizens at risk at the same time.

The FBI had already looked into obtaining the tools to tap into social media early this year. The difference between the FBI’s proposition and this is that DARPA is only wanting to look on the outside at patterns and learn from them. The FBI wanted to essentially wiretap your online communications. Both are unsettling in their own right, but I’ll take the DARPA plan over the FBI’s any day.

[h/t: NextGov]

So now the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has assigned Invincea to fortify Android based phones and tablets so they are safe for soldiers to use without the fear that the innocent apps that use GPS data to find out where they are (Facebook, Yelp) will give away their position. The hope is that Invincea will be able to create virtual environment in which applications can run in a “sandbox” or virtual environment.

“By separating untrusted apps and content we are preventing the compromise of the operating system,” said Anup Ghosh, a professor at George Mason University and the founder of Invincea. “Part of the problem is that soldiers often want to use their mobile devices to communicate with families back home, and to entertain themselves when possible.”

Invincea’s next project is to make sure that malware does not get in through an application, and that sensitive data does not get out. “The risks can be unexpected. Soldiers playing games on an Army base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, can easily and unknowingly transmit the names of their friends. A piece of malware can penetrate the operating system and suck out location information.”

This does seem like pretty good technology which begs me to wonder, why doesn’t the military already have tech that can detect cell phone signals that come from phones? Like a metal detector. Can’t hide out in a cave with a cell signal now can you?

Now a scientist by the name of Philip Low, a professor at Stanford and inventor of the iBrain, is working on a brain scanner that focuses on electrical activity and he tested it on Stephen Hawking. “We’d like to find a way to bypass his body, pretty much hack his brain,” said Prof Low.

Hawking and Low described how the physicist had to learn to create patterns of impulses by imagining moving his hands and limbs. “This is very exciting for us because it allows us to have a window into the brain. We’re building technology that will allow humanity to have access to the human brain for the first time,” said Prof Low.

This is all very exciting because this means that we could see fully controlled robots in the very near future. The iBrain device doesn’t need to be implanted into someones brain, it is a device that they wear. Last month the device was tested on Hawking and the results were good. “The emergence of such biomarkers opens the possibility to link intended movements to a library of words and convert them into speech, thus providing motor neurone sufferers with communication tools more dependent on the brain than on the body.”

The hope is that a device like this that can read the brains intentions will one day be able to help a doctor prescribe the right doses of medicine, be used to help treat sleep disorders, depression and even autism.

They have managed to create a robotic limb that can move using only the users thoughts. Thats right, a robot controlled by your brain! They managed this feat by implanting Microelectrode arrays in the motor cortex of the brains of two tetraplegic (quadriplegic) patients. Then with little instruction the two patients were able to control the robotic arms.

Researchers working with DARPA included Brown University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the National Institutes of Health and they managed to “demonstrate direct neural control of an advanced prosthetic arm,” the agency announced.

Check out the video of the lady using the arm to drink out of a container. When you see her smile you realize that this lady just got a piece of her freedom back that we all take for granted every day of the week: