Military tech

In 2012, 83 firefighters died in the line of duty in the U.S. alone, and another 37 fatalities have been reported thus far in 2013. But, with better scouting tools, these numbers could be lowered.

Thank goodness for robots.

A new one out of the University of California, San Diego, may soon help first responders survey a fiery scene with its ability to enter a burning building and immediately transmit data on the state and location of the fire, the building's structural integrity, and the presence of any volatile gases -- all while on the lookout for survivors.… Read more

Be afraid. Be very afraid of these three letters: LAR.

Lethal autonomous robots is what Christof Heyns, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, wants you to think about. He wants a global ban on the development of machines that can target people and kill them without supervision.

"The possible introduction of LARs raises far-reaching concerns about the protection of life during war and peace," Heyns said Thursday during the presentation of his latest report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. "If this is done, machines and not humans will take the decision on who is alive or dies." … Read more

Much like Steve Jobs and Apple's original iPhone, cybersecurity specialist Dan Roelker and DARPA have a vision for executing cyberwarfare that "just works."

According to an in-depth feature over at Wired, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which originally helped to create the internet, is now looking at ways to manage the battlefield our networks have evolved into that is as intuitive as a game of Angry Birds.

Dubbed Plan X, the initiative to create a technology infrastructure to allow those with little or no hacking experience to engage in cyberwarfare has tapped some of the biggest names in tech, design, and gaming.

Some of the ideas for interfaces ranged from Google Glass-like wearables to a gesture-based system using a Kinect, but the Wired piece focuses on a prototype from Frog Design centered on a Samsung Touch Table.… Read more

The latest round of cutting-edge aerospace technology feels very Zen to me. Much like SpaceX's Grasshopper Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing vehicle, this Lockheed Martin F-35B jet is capable of vertical take-offs and landings and appears to hover in the air in a sort of meditative state that seems odd for a military fighter.

The first vertical take-off and landing test of the production model was successfully conducted earlier this month and captured in the official video below. … Read more

Biomedical engineers are unveiling a new type of fabric that, much like human skin, can turn excess sweat into droplets that simply fall away on their own accord.

"We intentionally did not use any fancy microfabrication techniques so it is compatible with the textile manufacturing process and very easy to scale up," said Siyuan Xing in a school news release. Xing is the lead biomedical engineering student on the project at the University of California, Davis.

An article in the journal Lab on a Chip describes the fabric's microfluidic platform. Multiple woven threads suck droplets of water … Read more

Unlike Acoustic Kitty, the U.S. military's dolphin program, active since the 1960s, has had quite a bit of success. Dolphins, you see, are capable of producing sonar, and have an aptitude for learning commands, proving to be much more useful than machines for aquatic mine detection.

"Dolphins naturally possess the most sophisticated sonar known to man," explains Braden Duryee, operations supervisor for the SSC Pacific Biosciences Division. "They can detect mines and other potentially dangerous objects on the ocean floor that are acoustically difficult targets to detect."

This time, though, two of the trained bottle-nose dolphins have discovered something much more interesting than mines off the coast of Coronado, Calif: a late 19th century Howell Automobile Torpedo, the first self-propelled torpedo in the U.S. … Read more

A Texas man has become the first person to successfully fire a real bullet from a gun created on a home 3D printer. Sound crazy? In fact, the blueprint for the pistol is available for free online for anyone to access. And it's legal.

University of Texas law student Cody Wilson, 25, released a video of a 3D-printed gun named the "Liberator" taking test shots over the weekend. The gun is mostly made of plastic, with the exception of two metal pieces: a metal firing pin and a 6-ounce piece of steel that's required by law under the Undetectable Firearms Act. Of course, the piece of steel that makes the weapon visible to metal detectors, and legal, can certainly be omitted by future hobbyists.

Wilson invited Forbes reporter Andy Greenberg to witness the trial. Greenberg reports that 15 of the gun's 16 pieces were printed by a Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer -- the metal firing pin is the 16th piece. … Read more

Mimicking the human grasp is no easy feat. Robotic hands tend to be clunky and expensive.

But now, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is showing off a robotic hand that's dexterous enough to pick up keys and tough enough to survive being hit with a baseball bat.

The video below shows a prototype from DARPA's Autonomous Robotic Manipulation project. Instead of trying to reproduce the human hand in robot form, the prototype focuses on function. It has three fingers that are able to pick up small objects such as keys and credit cards, and it can even grasp objects with tweezers. … Read more

If the apparel oft proclaims the man, as Polonius said in "Hamlet," then the camo suit proclaims the robot.

Boston Dynamics is showing off new duds for its Petman humanoid robot platform, and it looks rather badass.

Peman is a walking, squatting, flexing hazmat suit testing machine. It's designed to stand up to chemical warfare agents.

With nothing on, it looks like The Terminator. But when it's wearing this camouflage chemical suit and gas mask, you could mistake it for a real soldier. … Read more