Meet Compressorhead

They can track you down and kill you, do your job better than you for no pay, and now they can kick out the jams better than you too. Great, just great. Expect to see robot teacher in front of the class in a year. Try asking it to accept your late work.

All hail our robot overlords.

A robot that can track you down

Buzzfeed describes 27 tech developments that sound like science fiction.
Here's a fun little development from our friends at DARPA (I always make a point to post items about these guys - they brought you the internet among other things).

This is a robot that can track humans and run as fast as a cheetah. They provide an appropriate comment: which seems like a great combination with no possibility of horrible side effects.

 

Here's their crack at a robotic horse:

 

 

From the Atlantic: Amid Partisan Bickering, Everyone Agrees: ARPA-E Is a Fascinating Experiment

ARPA-E is an attempt by the Energy Department to replicate for renewable energy what DARPA did for computing and digital technologies:

In previous decades, the Department of Energy drove basic research by operating giant government-funded labs, but under the leadership of Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu, the agency has transformed itself into something different: the biggest, greenest venture capital firm in the world.

After receiving an unprecedented surge in funding for renewable energy courtesy of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Chu set to work hiring big names from the nation's top research laboratories, in order to staff a new agency called ARPA-E, modeled after DARPA, the R&D wing of the Pentagon. In just three years, ARPA-E has made more than 180 investments in basic research projects in renewable energy, and that's in addition to grants issued by the Department of Energy proper, like the one that funded the Ocean Power Technologies project in Oregon.

NSF and the Birth of the Internet

A great overview of the development of the internet.

DARPA is trying to develop communications through telepathy

This builds on our discussion below of the relationship between the military (specifically DARPA) and technological development.

We're no strangers to crazy DARPA projects around here, but this one especially strikes our fantastic fancy. The agency's researchers are currently undertaking a project -- called Silent Talk -- to "allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals." That's right: they're talking about telepathy. Using an EEG to read brain waves, DARPA is going to attempt to analyze "pre-speech" thoughts, then transmit them to another person. They first plan to map people's EEG patterns to his / her individual words, then see if those patterns are common to all people. If they are, then the team will move on to developing a way to transmitting those patterns to another person. Dream big, that's what we always say!

One of the Internet's Inventors Dies

Paul Baran invented packet switching, which is still in use today, as a means of ensuring that communications could surive a nuclear attack. Little surprise that the Defense Department (DARPA) would purchase the technique and use it as the backbone of the Arpanet - later to become the internet.

I've argued in 2302 that the federal government, through the military, has promoted practically every technical development in American history. Here's some proof.

The DARPA Arm

While putting notes together for this week's 2302 review of contemporary executive branch issues (I want to look at health care) I stumbled across a feature on the VA Health Administration's website about the "Darpa Arm," an advanced prosthetic arm funded and developed by the agency.

Prosthetic research has been spurred by an unexpected result of improved battlefield medical care. Previously, soldiers with severe injuries which did not cause immediate death would often die of blood loss or infections. This is less the case, but it means that more soldiers survive with lost limbs. This can obviously create problems with their ability to fit back into society. Advanced research in prosthetics could make this transition easier.

I thought it might be appropriate to mention this agency since many of the current technological items we enjoy today (including the internet) originally developed as DARPA projects. Current research, which in addition to prosthetics includes robotics, advanced batteries and alternative energy, will certainly provide the basis for future mass market products.

- Website: DARPA.
- Wikipedia: DARPA.
- Wikipedia: DARPA Grand Challenge.
- VA Research Currents.
- WAPO Story.