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.

Listen and subscribe to the "Voices from DARPA" podcast at: https://www.blubrry.com/voices_from_darpa/25217980/episode-11-the-thin-air-specialist/ In this episode, get inside the full-spectrum engineering head of Dr. Troy Olsson, a program manager since 2014 in the Agency’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO). Listen in as Olsson describes progress toward vanishing materials that can keep sensi...

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, get inside the full-spectrum engineering head of Dr. Troy Olsson, a program manager since 2014 in the Agency’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO). Listen in as Olsson describes progress toward vanishing materials that can keep sensitive electronic components out of adversaries’ hands; unmanned air vehicles that can deliver provisions and then just disappear;...

"...Somewhere around 2007 I got a visit from a guy who was frenetic. He was in full uniform; he's a colonel; and within a few minutes you realize besides being a colonel who had done a couple of rounds in Iraq and Afghanistan, he's also a neurosurgeon, and he's very passionate about taking care of his people. And within a few minutes of when we meet Dr. Ling, he's pounding on my conference room ta...

On Friday, June 30th, at a ceremony at the Manhattan campus of the Department of Veterans Affairs' New York Harbor Health Care System, two veterans living with arm amputations became the first recipients of a new generation of prosthetic limb that promises them unprecedented, near-natural arm and hand motion. The modular, battery-powered arms, designed and developed by DEKA Research and Developmen...

DARPA FLA researchers discuss their unique approaches to achieving autonomous flight without GPS or remote control (RC) communication links.

Phase 1 of DARPA’s Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) program concluded recently following a series of obstacle-course flight tests in central Florida. Over four days, three teams of DARPA-supported researchers huddled under shade tents in the sweltering Florida sun, fine-tuning their sensor-laden quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) during the intervals between increasingly difficult runs. DAR...

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, get to know Dr. Jonathan Pfautz, a program manager since 2015 in the Agency's Information Innovation Office (I2O), where he epitomizes the Agency’s deliberate blindness to traditional disciplinary boundaries. With a background in computer engineering and electrical engineering, as well as in the cognitive and behavioral sciences, Pfautz is seeking to develop n...

Bill Regli, DARPA's Defense Sciences Office (DSO) acting director, describes how DSO scours the frontiers of science and engineering to look for disruptive ideas or revolutionary insights that could open up entirely new domains for innovation and discovery and spark DSO's program managers to create breakthrough technologies for national security. The DSO office-wide Broad Agency Announcement is a...

DARPA has selected The Boeing Company to complete advanced design work for the Agency’s Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program, which aims to build and fly the first of an entirely new class of hypersonic aircraft that would bolster national security by providing short-notice, low-cost access to space. The program aims to achieve a capability well out of reach today—launches to low Earth orbit in ...

They came, they flew, they wildly exceeded expectations. More than 40 Cadets and Midshipmen from the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy, and the U.S. Air Force Academy helped expand the capabilities of swarms of highly autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) last month in the Service Academies Swarm Challenge. In the skies over Camp Roberts, an Army National Guard post north of Pas...

Today's world is a network of interconnected, embedded computer systems with components ranging in size and complexity from large supervisory control and data acquisition systems that manage physical infrastructure such as electrical grids and dams, to smaller but still critical systems inside airplanes, satellites, medical devices, computer printers and routers, and handheld devices such as cell ...

From April 23-25, 2017, the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy, and the U.S. Air Force Academy competed in unmanned aerial swarm battles in the skies over Camp Roberts, California, as part of DARPA's Service Academies Swarm Challenge... Full recap video coming soon. May the Swarm be with you. Previous story: http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2017-04-23

In the latest episode of our podcast series, Voices from DARPA, Mr. Wade Shen of the Agency’s Information Innovation Office talks about his fascination with language of all kinds and about the challenge of getting human beings and their computers to put their respective cognitive frameworks together to yield deep insight into how the world works and how information affects the way people think and...

DARPA created the Service Academies Swarm Challenge to help make effective unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm tactics a reality. The Challenge is a collaboration between the Agency and the three U.S. military Service academies—the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy, and the U.S. Air Force Academy. An experiment at its heart, the research effort is designed to encourage students to deve...

DARPA's Service Academies Swarm Challenge is an aerial game of Capture the Flag played by swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles overseen by human operators. The competition, being waged by students from the three U.S. military Service academies, is an opportunity for the next generation of operators and tacticians to explore and understand swarm-versus-swarm interactions. Two teams at a time play i...

Dr. Blake Bextine discusses DoD SBIR Topic SB172-002, "Improved Mass Production of Beneficial Insects" For more information visit https://SBIR_IndustryDay.darpa.mil