DARPA

If you've ever needed a legitimate reason to question human obsolescence, DARPA just gave you one in the form of an ATLAS.

Warrior Web program aims to deliver a lightweight under-suit that can reduce injuries and enhance performance.

Robots are being made for all kinds of situations these days including mundane tasks like changing tires.

It seems the public and private industry are more frequently being asked to come up with ideas for what might best be called "the Next Big Things." The main driver of this trend is the U.S. government but there are a number of private enterprises looking to pay you good money for your ideas.

DARPA, if you didn't know, stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They're the governmental organization that develops ridiculous things like flying tanks and other science fiction. Next month, however, DARPA is hitting closer to home with "Plan X", a one-day workshop designed to flesh out the US government's strategy for war in cyberspace.

Let's say you want to build a swarm of inch-long flying robots. (Maybe you've got a DARPA grant. Maybe it's an art project---imagine if those moved.) Flying is complicated and requires a lot of mechanical linkages and electrical connections. You can machine and assemble one robot by hand, under a microscope, with tweezers and a scalpel; it's a literal pain in the neck, but it's doable. But are you really going to do that for a hundred of them? A thousand? A million?

DARPA has launched a Robotics Challenge, a high-tech contest that will award as much as $34 million in prize money in various categories, for robotics hardware and software development tasks that can be ysed in emergency response situations.

Google, in a coup, has hired Regina Dugan, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), for a senior executive position.

Our first bipedal military robot may not be human shaped, terminator inspired killing machine. No, it could be something far more terrifying--a robotic ostrich.