In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, David Gunning chronicles his three tours of duty as a DARPA program manager (PM), including his latest tour with the Agency’s Information Innovation Office. Throughout his DARPA service, David has combined his training and interests in computer science and psychology in ways that have extended the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI) technolo...

The Director of the first information technology office at DARPA was JCR Licklider, who said in 1960: “in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought.” In the beginning, humans handled all tasks across the data-wisdom spectrum. With the advent of machines, we recognized h...

The focus of this swarm sprint is on enabling improved swarm autonomy through enhancements of swarm platforms and/or autonomy elements, with the operational backdrop of utilizing a diverse swarm of 50 air and ground robots to isolate an urban objective within an area of two square city blocks over a mission duration of 15 to 30 minutes. Swarm Sprinters will leverage existing or develop new hardwar...

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, COL Matthew Hepburn, a program manager since 2013 with the Agency’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO), explains how his urgent ambition to develop ways and means of disarming current and emerging infectious and pandemic diseases—think here of Ebola, influenza, and Chikungunya—has led to a portfolio of go-for-the-gold programs that ultimately could reduce hu...

DARPA’s Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2)–the first collaborative machine-intelligence competition aimed at overcoming spectrum scarcity–held a preliminary event on December 13, 2017, at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. Nineteen teams from around the world came together to participate, and the top 10 finishers each walked away with $750,000 in prize...

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, electrical engineer Kerry Bernstein, a program manager since 2012 with the Agency’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO), chronicles how his decades of experience in the trenches of the microelectronics manufacturing world drives what he does at DARPA. He is all about ensuring the reliability and integrity of the microelectronic chips the country needs and use...

DARPA has successfully completed its Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program and has officially transferred the technology demonstration vessel, christened Sea Hunter, to the Office of Naval Research (ONR). ONR will continue developing the revolutionary prototype vehicle—the first of what could ultimately become an entirely new class of ocean-going vessel able...

Since its inception in 1958, DARPA has held to a singular and enduring mission: to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security. www.darpa.mil

http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2018-01-09a The growing complexity of space operations coupled with an increased need for timely decisions demands innovative approaches to battle management command and control (BMC2) technologies. To help ensure future U.S. technological and strategic superiority, DARPA’s Hallmark program seeks to develop revolutionary tools and technologies to plan, assess, and...

DARPA’s Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program aims to extend the capability of the U.S. military’s existing unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) to conduct dynamic, long-distance engagements of highly mobile ground and maritime targets in denied or contested electromagnetic airspace. Multiple CODE-equipped unmanned aircraft would navigate to their destinations and find, track, ...

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, physicist Rosa Alejandra “Ale” Lukaszew, a program manager who is just finishing her first year with the Agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), recounts how her interest in quantum phenomena took root at the age of 10 when already she could write down the equations of uncertainty. Now, at DARPA, she is channeling what became a lifelong fascination with fundam...

Underground settings are becoming increasingly relevant to global security and safety. Rising populations and urbanization are requiring military and civilian first responders to perform their duties below ground in human-made tunnels, underground urban spaces, and natural cave networks. Recognizing that innovative, enhanced technologies could accelerate development of critical lifesaving capabili...

DARPA’s Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2) – the first collaborative machine-intelligence competition aimed at overcoming spectrum scarcity – held a preliminary event on December 13, 2017, at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. Nineteen teams from around the world came together to participate, and the top 10 finishers each walked away with $750,000 in ...

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, sociocultural anthropologist Adam Russell, a program manager with the Agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), discusses his vision for a range of technologies that can help usher in a next-generation social science. At the crux of this future view are novel experimental designs, practices, and tools to tackle research challenges that traditionally have limited...

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, Jim Galambos, a program manager with the Agency’s Strategic Technology Office (STO), talks about the opportunities and challenges of rethinking military platforms like submarines and aircraft as systems of systems, much as a human body can be thought of as a system of circulatory, neurological, sensory, musculoskeletal, and other subsystems. The system-of-syst...

Dr. Thomas Rondeau talks about the DARPA Bay Area SDR Hackfest, which will be held at the NASA Ames Conference Center in Mountain View, California November 13-17, 2017. #DARPAhackfest

While people often think about swarms as simply being large collections of robots, swarms, in fact, have five defining characteristics: number, agent complexity, collective complexity, heterogeneity, and human-swarm interaction. DARPA's OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program will explore these characteristics as it seeks to develop and demonstrate operationally relevant swarm tactics tha...

DARPA’s OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program envisions future small-unit infantry forces using small unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and/or small unmanned ground systems (UGSs) in swarms of 250 robots or more to accomplish diverse missions in complex urban environments. By leveraging and combining emerging technologies in swarm autonomy and human-swarm teaming, the program seeks to en...

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, Maj. Christopher Orlowski, a program manager with extensive military experience and now at the end of his tenure of the Agency’s Tactical Technology Office (TTO), draws a line from his research programs in mechanized and robotic undersuits, vehicles, and human-machine systems, which are driven by the goal of empowering warfighters on the ground in unprecedente...

On October 4, 1957, there was a beeping sound "heard" round the world. It came while the United States and Soviet Union were caught in the fervor of the Cold War, but also at a time when people believed that American ingenuity and industry could overcome any technical challenge. So when the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, Americans were shocked and...

For more information visit https://sbir_industryday.darpa.mil/

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is known for the wide range of research and development programs it runs to open pathways toward technologies that can further the cause of national security. Each program is most often known by its very own acronym, so for all those returning to school, or just to their normal post-summer routines, DARPA offers its own version of the ABCs. ...

Listen and subscribe to the "Voices from DARPA" podcast at: https://www.blubrry.com/voices_from_darpa/25962695/episode-12the-neobiologist/ In this episode of Voices from DARPA, synthetic biologist and program manager Justin Gallivan of the Agency’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO) shares his vision of leveraging biology’s astonishing, evolution-honed abilities for making molecules and materi...

DARPA’s Towed Airborne Lift of Naval Systems (TALONS) research effort recently demonstrated its prototype of a low-cost, elevated sensor mast aboard a U.S. Navy vessel for the first time. The crew of USS Zephyr, a Cyclone-class patrol coastal ship, tried out the technology demonstration system over three days last March near Naval Station Mayport in Mayport, Florida. TALONS demonstrated safe and ...

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, synthetic biologist and program manager Justin Gallivan of the Agency’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO) shares his vision of leveraging biology’s astonishing, evolution-honed abilities for making molecules and materials (think here of protein and wood) into powerful new technologies that fall into the emerging category of synthetic biology. Among the pote...

DARPA's Strategic Technology Office seeks to turn complexity into a powerful new asymmetric weapon via rapidly composable networks of low-cost sensors, multi-domain command and control nodes, and cooperative manned and unmanned systems. Using the concept of a mosaic, which comprises many smaller individual pieces, STO is applying "mosaic warfare" to link together lower-cost, less complex systems i...

DARPA's Strategic Technology Office seeks to turn complexity into a powerful new asymmetric weapon via rapidly composable networks of low-cost sensors, multi-domain command and control nodes, and cooperative manned and unmanned systems. Using the concept of a mosaic, which comprises many smaller individual pieces, STO is applying "mosaic warfare" to link together lower-cost, less complex systems i...

"Cyber Grand Challenge: The Analysis" takes a in-depth, post-game look at the CGC Final Event competition data, providing expert analysis of the complex gameplay executed by the novel autonomous cyber reasoning systems that competed in the Challenge.