US Navy Autonomous Swarm Boats

A fleet of U.S. Navy boats approached an enemy vessel like sharks circling their prey. 

Iin this case, part of an exercise conducted by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR), the boats operated without any direct human control: they acted as a robot boat swarm.

The tests on Virginia’s James River this past summer represented the first large-scale military demonstration of a swarm of autonomous boats designed to overwhelm enemies. This capability points to a future where the U.S. Navy and other militaries may deploy underwater, surface, and flying robotic vehicles to defend themselves or attack a hostile force.

“What’s new about the James River test was having five USVs [unmanned surface vessels] operating together with no humans on board,” said Robert Brizzolara, an ONR program manager.

In the test, five robot boats practiced an escort mission that involved protecting a main ship against possible attackers. To command the boats, the Navy use a system called the Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS). The system not only steered the autonomous boats but also coordinated its actions with other vehicles—a larger group of manned and remotely-controlled vessels.

Avian-Inspired Grasping For Quadrotor Micro Aerial Vehicles

'Fetching and Carrying' Robots Swarm

Courtesy Of Reuters

British researchers have created a swarm of self-organising robots which can carry out simple fetching and carrying tasks. They say their work sets the stage for the development of autonomous teams of robots to help in disaster rescue efforts and even medical surgery. Jim Drury reports.

The Coming Micro-Drone Revolution

By John W. Whitehead

“[Drones are a] game-changing technology, akin to gunpowder, the steam engine, the atomic bomb—opening up possibilities that were fiction a generation earlier but also opening up perils that were unknown a generation ago.”—Peter Singer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution

America will never be a “no drone zone.”

That must be acknowledged from the outset. There is too much money to be made on drones, for one, and too many special interest groups—from the defense sector to law enforcement to the so-called “research” groups that are in it for purely “academic” reasons—who have a vested interest in ensuring that drones are here to stay.

At one time, there was a small glimmer of hope that these aerial threats to privacy would not come home to roost, but that all ended when Barack Obama took office and made drones the cornerstone of his war efforts. By the time President Obama signed the FAA Reauthorization Act into law in 2012, there was no turning back. The FAA opened the door for drones, once confined to the battlefields over Iraq and Afghanistan, to be used domestically for a wide range of functions, both public and private, governmental and corporate. It is expected that at least 30,000 drones will occupy U.S. airspace by 2020, ushering in a $30 billion per year industry.

Those looking to the skies in search of Predator drones will be in for a surprise, however, because when the drones finally descend en masse on America, they will not be the massive aerial assault vehicles favored by the Obama administration in their overseas war efforts. Rather, the drones coming to a neighborhood near you will be small, some nano in size, capable of flying through city streets and buildings almost undetected, while hovering over cityscapes and public events for long periods of time, providing a means of 24/7 surveillance.

One type of drone sensor, the Gorgon Stare, can keep track of an area 2.5 miles across from 12 different angles. Another sensor system, ARGUS, can find an object that is only 6 inches long, from 20,000 feet up in the air. A drone equipped with this kind of technology could spy on an entire city at once. For example, police in California are about to begin using Qube drones, which are capable of hovering for 40 minutes at heights of about 400 ft. to conduct surveillance on targets as far as 1 kilometer away. Michael Downing, the LAPD deputy chief for counter-terrorism and special operations, envisions drones being flown over large-scale media events such as the Oscars, using them to surveil political protests, and flying them through buildings to track criminal suspects.

These micro-drones will be the face of surveillance and crowd control in the coming drone age.

Modeled after birds, insects, and other small animals, these small airborne surveillance devices can remain hidden in plain view while navigating spaces off limits to conventional aircraft. Able to take off and land anywhere, able to maneuver through city streets and hallways, and able to stop and turn on a dime, these micro-drones will still pack a lethal punch, equipped with an array of weapons and sensors, including tasers, bean-bag guns, “high-resolution video cameras, infrared sensors, license plate readers, [and] listening devices.”

You can rest assured, given the pace of technology and the fervor of the drone industry (and its investors), that the sky is the limit when it comes to the many uses (and abuses) for drones in America. The following is just a small sampling of what will be descending from the skies in the near future.

Cyborg drones. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has begun to develop a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) for the manipulation of insects into “cyborgs.” Through genetic engineering, they are aiming to control the movement of insects and utilize them for surveillance purposes.

Dragonfly drone. First reportedly spotted in 2007 hovering over protesters at an anti-war rally in Washington, DC, it turns out that the government’s dragonfly drones are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to small aerial surveillance devices designed to mimic nature. Just a year later, the US Air Force “unveiled insect-sized spies ‘as tiny as bumblebees’ that could not be detected and would be able to fly into buildings to ‘photograph, record, and even attack insurgents and terrorists.’”

Hummingbird drone. Shaped like a bird, the “Nano Hummingbird” drone is negligibly larger than an actual hummingbird and fits in the palm of one’s hand. It flits around effortlessly, blending in with its surroundings. DARPA, the advanced research division of the Department of Defense, gets the credit for this biotic wonder.

Nano Quadrators. Similar to the hummingbird drone, these small, four-propellered nano quadrator drones, developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, operate based upon the flight dynamics of insects, enabling them to operate as a swarm. Using twenty drones, researchers demonstrated how, moving compactly as a unit, the drones were able to navigate obstacles, form complex patterns, and even execute a fluid figure eight arrangement.

Black Hornet Nano drone. Weighing in at roughly half an ounce and four inches long, comparable to a finch, the Black Hornet Nano helicopter drone was designed to capture and relay video and still images to remote users, and can fly even in windy conditions.

DASH Roachbot drone. Developed at UC Berkeley's PolyPEDAL Lab, DASH, a 10-centimeter long, 16-gram Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod strives to mimic a cockroach’s speed and ability to remain covert and a gecko’s speed and agility. Trained to perform “rapid inversion” maneuvers that include dashing up to a ledge and then swinging itself around to end up underneath the ledge and upside-down, DASH is being trained to make rapid transitions between running and climbing.

Samarai drone. Lockheed Martin’s compact “Samarai” drone, inspired by the design of a maple seed, is capable of high speeds, low battery consumption, vertical movement, and swift ground deployment.

MicroBat drone. Additionally, CIT Group, Aerovironment, and UCLA have produced a “MicroBat”  ornithopter; it was designed in part by zoologists who have attempted to make the MicroBat mimic the movement of birds and other flying animals.

Spy-butterfly drone. In 2012, Israel unveiled its new insect-inspired drone which they dubbed the “spy-butterfly” because of its two sizable wings. Weighing in at only 20g, this drone was developed for indoor surveillance, including public places such as “train stations and airport terminals—or office buildings.” The size and muted sound of the “virtually noiseless” machines makes them unnoticeable and therefore ideal for intelligence gathering. The spy-butterfly is so realistic that, when tested, “birds and flies tended to fall behind the device arranging into a flock.”

Switchblade drone. A more sinister example is the Switchblade, a small military drone intended to act as a kamikaze weapon. Weighing in at a mere six pounds and two feet in length, it flies effortlessly through urban environments before zeroing in on its target, a person, at which point it explodes, unceremoniously killing him or her.

Mosquito drone. More lethal than its real-life counterpart, the mosquito drone, while an engineering marvel, is also a privacy advocate’s nightmare with its potential to land on someone and use a needle-like-pincer to extract DNA from its victims or, alternatively, inject drugs or other foreign substances. As software engineer Alan Lovejoy notes:

Such a device could be controlled from a great distance and is equipped with a camera, microphone. It could land on you and then use its needle to take a DNA sample with the pain of a mosquito bite. Or it could inject a micro RFID tracking device under your skin. It could land on you and stay, so that you take it with you into your home. Or it could fly into a building through a window. There are well-funded research projects working on such devices with such capabilities.

Raven drone. Weighing in at 4 pounds, the RQ-11 Raven drone is not as small, nor is it as agile as its smaller counterparts, but with more than 19,000 out there already, it is the most common. Useful for seeing around corners and sending footage back to its handlers, the Raven resembles a rudimentary model airplane and crumbles like Legos upon landing.

With 63 active drone sites across the nation and 56 government agencies presently authorized to use drones, including 22 law enforcement agencies and 24 universities, drones are here to stay. Indeed, the cost of drones—underwritten by a $4 million Homeland Security program which encourages local law enforcement to adopt drone technology as quickly as possible—makes them an easy sell for most police departments. Moreover, while manned airplanes and helicopters can cost $600/hour to operate, a drone can be put in the sky for less than $25/hour. That doesn’t even begin to cover drone use by the private sector, which is already chomping at the bit at the prospect.

No matter what the future holds, however, we must ensure that Americans have a semblance of civil liberties protections against the drones. Given the courts’ leniency towards police, predicating drone use on a warrant requirement would provide little to no protection.  Thus, the only hope rests with Congress and state legislatures that they would adopt legislation specifically prohibiting the federal government from using data recorded via police spy drones in criminal prosecutions, as well as preventing police agencies from utilizing drones outfitted with anti-personnel devices such as tasers and tear gas.

Either way, we’d better get ready. As Peter W. Singer, author of “Wired for War,” a book about military robotics, warns: “The debate over drones is like debating the merits of computers in 1979: They are here to stay, and the boom has barely begun. We are at the Wright Brothers Flier stage of this. There’s no stopping this technology. Anybody who thinks they can put this genie back in the box—that’s silliness.”

Amazing AI Robot

Courtesy Of NOVA

You can view the full episode here: "PBS"

The 'Robocop' Headset

A headset computer promises to give police officers and other emergency services Robocop-like abilities.

The Golden-i device, similar to the Glass project being developed by Google, offers the ability to see through walls thanks to infrared technology.

It is operated by voice commands and head movements and allows the wearer to access vital information without using their hands.

Golden-i has been developed by U.S. company Kopin Corporation, but software solutions tailored to police, firefighters and paramedics have been created by Nottinghamshire-based firm Ikanos Consulting. 

It was shown off at the CES 2013 show in Las Vegas last month, although the firm says it is 'too early' to give a price.

It is set to be trialled this year, and could go on sale before Google's Glass project, which is a far more compact headset the search giant also plans to release this year.

The Police Pro application provides real-time situational awareness in the field by allowing officers to record incidents for later analysis and view live video feeds from other Golden-i headsets.

The system can also identify suspects using facial recognition, receive alerts from motion sensors, scan licence plates instantly, monitor basic vital signs and call up floor plans and GPS coordinates.

The Firefighter Pro application allows firefighters to call up floor plans and GPS coordinates, see through walls using infrared technology, monitor crew and surroundings, navigate through unknown environments and provide on-site video streaming.

They can also access medical records, stream live video, discuss options with associates and view maps or use GPS.

Office workers can also benefit from the technology with the Ikanos-created Lifeboard application. This system enables you to customise up to 6 different screens to meet personal working preferences and manage your day.

The Golden-i unit features an inertially stabilised 14-megapixel camera with optional infrared camera for thermal and night vision.

A 1080 HD detachable camera for recording or sending real-time video can also be added.

Selected Golden-i devices come pre-loaded with a set of core Gi-OS applications, including E-mail Center, Ask Ziggy, Web Browser and File Explorer. 

The Golden-i platform will continue to evolve as the developer community works together to build voice-controlled augmented reality applications for Golden-i.

The Golden-i hardware and software developer kit is expected be released by the summer, while a consumer version is slated for later in the year.

Via: "The Daily Mail"

The Robot That'll Extract Water From The Moon

The RASSOR robot climbs a hill during a recent test at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (NASA)

One of the biggest challenges of space travel has very little to do with the traveling itself, and more to do with everything that happens afterward. How will humans sustain themselves if we send them back to the moon (and, as planned, to Mars)? Food, even freeze-dried, is heavy. Water, too. Maintenance is expensive, in every sense of the word. So if manned space travel is to become a long-term reality, we'll need to find ways to cultivate the places and planets we visit: to mine their soil for nutrients, to find the water hidden in their depths, to generate the air that will make everything else possible.

NASA has an idea for doing all that, and it takes the form -- as so many innovative ideas seem to these days -- of a robot. 

Meet ... the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot -- RASSOR, for short. The robot (pronounced as "razor") is an excavator device, designed to extract (yes) water, (yes) ice, and (yes) fuel from the soil of the moon. And from the soil of similarly dusty bodies (like, say, Mars). NASA is envisioning that RASSOR, currently in development in prototype form, will not only perform the Greek-fable-meets-rocket-science-reality task of getting water from rocks; it will also take the remaining dust and convert the chemicals it contains into two things crucial to astronauts: air for breathing, and fuel for moving. "The robot," NASA says, "would be the feeder for a lunar resource processing plant, a level of industry never before tried anywhere besides Earth."

With a pair of drums positioned on arms, the RASSOR can take on a number of different shapes to accomplish its work. (NASA)

So. How do you design a device that can do all that work? How do you create an automaton that is rover and water filtration center and power plant all rolled in one rolling vehicle? One obvious challenge is mass. On the one hand, the robot in question has to be light enough to feasibly fly on a rocket. (It takes about $4,000, NASA says, to send a single pound of payload into space.) On the other hand, though, the machine has to be heavy enough to operate in less gravity than that offered by Earth. (In the moon's case: less than 20 percent of that gravity.) It also has to be generally substantial enough to dig into soil without tipping over, and to operate -- like its fellow lunar and Martian rovers -- as a kind of multi-purpose machine.

The RASSOR can climb over large obstacles, like the boulders that are strewn on the moon. To test that ability on Earth, engineers used a stepping stool to challenge the robot. (NASA)

The current prototype has solved many of those problems by applying its multi-purpose intentions to multi-purpose design. The drums that the machine will use to gather soil double as legs -- which can, in turn, help the robot to navigate dusty terrain. (They also allow the 100-pound, 2.5-foot-tall device to dig effectively, since one of those drums can act as a grip to balance the robot as it does its work.) Though the current design has given the RASSOR a tank-like shape, with tracks to balance the robot as it roves other worlds, NASA is considering replacing that base with wheels -- which would make the next RASSOR iteration a little more Martian-rover-like than the current one. But the modular capability, ostensibly, would be a constant.

So: a shape-shifting, water-mining spacebot! If you, like I, would like to see what the final version of this could look like, you don't have long to wait. NASA is expecting that the RASSOR 2 -- the next generation of the spunky little power plant -- will begin testing in early 2014.

Via: "The Atlantic"

Google Building Your ‘Cybernetic Friend’

World-renowned artificial intelligence expert and Google’s new Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, wants to build a search engine so sophisticated that it could act like a ‘cybernetic friend,’ who knows users better than they know themselves. “I envision in some years that the majority of search queries will be answered without you actually asking,” he said at an intimate gathering at Singularity University’s NASA campus.

Language, Kurzweil argues, is the window to creating a genuine artificial brain, that can understand the meaning of ideas and concepts. “If you write a blog post, you’re not just creating a bag of words, you’re creating some meaningful sentences.” For now, search engines have brute-force algorithms that pick out key words in popular pages and hope that the results, on average, will yield the best information.

So-called “semantic” search parses the meaning and intentions behind words. Semantic search aims to solve the ‘hotdog’ problem, as explained by Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt,

“Is it a ‘hot dog’ or a ‘hotdog.’ And, if you knew something about whether the person had dogs, or whether the person was a vegetarian, you’d have a very different potential answer to that question.”

Eventually Google will understand why users are searching for information and provide them with answers they didn’t even know they needed. The education of such an omnipotent new mind will take the vast stores of Google’s database. Perhaps more than any other company, explains Kurzweil, Google has access to the “things you read, what you write, in your emails or blog posts, and so on, even your conversations, what you hear, what you say.”

Google can combine the personalized recommendations of a friend (who often know us better than we know ourselves) with the sum of all human knowledge, creating a sort of super best friend.

This friend of yours, this cybernetic friend, that knows that you that have certain questions about certain health issues or business strategies. And, It can then be canvassing all the new information that comes out in the world every minute and then bring things to your attention without you asking about them

Kurzweil was quick to dispel the myth he was given “unlimited” funds, but humbly suggests that Google is giving him “sufficient resources for a very important project.”

Via: "Tech Crunch"

Teaching Robots To Deceive

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta,Georgia have developed a few robots that deceive each other. 

How? By transferring the deceptive behavioral patterns of squirrels and birds into the small mobile robots. In other words, the research team developed algorithms that allow a robot to determine if it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine and techniques to help the robot select the best deceptive strategy and reduce its chance of being discovered.

Professor Ronald Arkin, a Regents Professor at the School of Interactive Computing at GeorgiaTech, and his team reviewed biological research results from squirrels showing how they gather acorns and store them in specific locations. Then, they patrol their hidden stashes, routinely going back and forth to check on them. When another squirrel shows up, the hoarding squirrel changes its behavior and instead of checking on the true location of its hidden stash, it visits empty stash sites, trying to deceive his competition.

The team implemented the same strategy into a robotic model and it took. The deceiving robot lured the competitor robot to the false locations, delaying the discovery of the protected resources. The hider robots were able to deceive the seeker robots in 75 percent of the trials.

Why you ask? According to Professor Arkin, this type of robot could be applied to the military or search and rescue operations in the future. Incidentally, the project is funded funded by the Office of Naval Research.

“This application could be used by robots guarding ammunition or supplies on the battlefield,” said Arkin. “If an enemy were present, the robot could change its patrolling strategies to deceive humans or another intelligent machine, buying time until reinforcements are able to arrive.”

Georgia Tech Regents professor Ronald Arkin (left) & research engineer Alan Wagner look on as the black robot deceives the red robot into thinking it's hiding down the left corridor. (Georgia Tech Photo: Gary Meek)

According to the research paper, a search and rescue robot may need to deceive in order to calm or receive cooperation from a panicking victim. Robots on the battlefield with the power of deception will be able to successfully hide and mislead the enemy to keep themselves and valuable information safe.

“Most social robots will probably rarely use deception, but it’s still an important tool in the robot’s interactive arsenal because robots that recognize the need for deception have advantages in terms of outcome compared to robots that do not recognize the need for deception,” said Alan Wagner, a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and study’s co-author.

Looking to birds, the research team also created a simulation and demo based on birds that might bluff their way to safety. A bird known as an Arabian babblers that’s in danger of being attacked will join other birds and harass their predator. This mobbing process causes such a commotion that the predator will eventually give up the attack and leave.

Arkin’s team investigated whether a simulated babbler is more likely to survive if it fakes or feigns strength when it doesn’t exist. The team’s simulations, based on biological models of dishonesty and the handicap principle, show that deception is the best strategy when the addition of deceitful agents pushes the size of the group to the minimum level required to frustrate the predator enough for it to flee.

Arkin says the reward for deceit sometimes outweighs the risk of being caught.

“In military operations, a robot that’s threatened might feign the ability to combat adversaries without actually being able to effectively protect itself,” said Arkin. “Being honest about the robot’s abilities risks capture or destruction. Deception, if used at the right time in the right way, could possibly eliminate or minimize the threat.”

Via: "Forbes"

True Skin

Written & Directed by: Stephan Zlotescu
Director of Photography: H1
Original Music: J-Punch
Producer: Christopher Sewall
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An N1ON Production
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DNA Origami Opens Way For Nanoscale Machines

Image: The thrust to design single-molecule-sized nanocar. 

DNA strands can be coaxed to fold up into shapes in a matter of minutes, reveals a study. The finding could radically speed up progress in the field of DNA origami.

Biotechnologists are itching to be able to use DNA to make nanoscale machines, but so far they have made only simple forms — tubes, boxes, triangles — and the process has been laborious and time-consuming (see 'What to make with DNA origami').

The technique involves using short DNA strands to hold a longer, folded strand in place at certain points, like sticky tape. Until now, assembling the shape has involved heating the DNA and allowing it to cool slowly for up to a week.

But that time has now been slashed to minutes. Hendrik Dietz, a biophysicist at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, and his colleagues stained the DNA with fluorescent dye and watched what happened as it cooled and folded. By stopping the reaction at different stages, they could check how far the folding and sticking had gone.

They discovered something striking: “It turns out that almost for the entire temperature range, nothing happens," says Dietz. But when a crucial temperature is reached, the whole structure forms suddenly. The results are published in Science¹.

Dietz analysed the folding of 19 different DNA shapes, including cylindrical, brick-like and cog-like objects. Each shape folded in a specific narrow temperature range somewhere between 45 °C and 60 °C.

After working out which temperature corresponded to which shape, Dietz subjected the unfolded DNA reaction mixtures to these pre-determined temperatures for just a few minutes to see whether they would fold into the desired shape. They did — and with high yield.

DNA-origami experts are excited at the prospect of speeding up their work. “It makes our lives a lot easier,” says William Shih, who works in the field at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, and whose group has already benefited from Dietz’s work. Easier, quicker and more efficient folding will help to take DNA origami beyond simple shapes, he adds.

Dietz hopes that he will be able to use his findings to build a computer model to predict how to make other DNA objects. He noticed that certain traits of the shapes that he made were correlated with the temperature at which they folded — for example, shapes that used longer binding strands folded at higher temperatures. Dietz aims to design nanostructures with optimal folding temperatures close to 37 °C, the temperature at which mammalian cell cultures are grown, so that DNA machines could one day be used in biological settings.

Via: "Nature"

Creating Mutant-Powered Troops

By David Axe
Courtesy Of "Wired"

Greater strength and endurance. Enhanced thinking. Better teamwork. New classes of genetic weaponry, able to subvert DNA. Not long from now, the technology could exist to routinely enhance — and undermine — people’s minds and bodies using a wide range of chemical, neurological, genetic and behavioral techniques.

It’s warfare waged at the evolutionary level. And it’s coming sooner than many people think. According to the futurists at the U.S. National Intelligence Council, by 2030, “neuro-enhancements could provide superior memory recall or speed of thought. Brain-machine interfaces could provide ‘superhuman‘ abilities, enhancing strength and speed, as well as providing functions not previously available.”

Qualities that today must be honed by years of training and education could be installed in a relative instant by, say, an injection or a targeted burst of electricity to the brain. Rapid advancements in neurology, pharmacology and genetics could soon make such installations fairly easy.

These modifications could give rise to new breeds of biologically enhanced troops possessing what one expert in the field calls “mutant powers.” But those troops may not American. So far, the U.S. military has been extremely reluctant to embrace human biological modification, or “biomods.” And that could result in a veritable mutant gap. In this new form of biological warfare, the U.S. could find itself outgunned.

A 29-year-old Georgetown-trained researcher with degrees in microbiology, health physics and national security, Herr is one a handful of specialists in the defense community preaching greater U.S. investment in biomods. First as a consultant with the Scitor Corporation, a Virginia-based firm whose clients include top military and intelligence agencies, and later as the head of his own research organization, Herr’s job has been to think about biological modifications whose effects he says are “more than evolutionary.”

The Once-and-Future Mutant Age

Ten years ago, there were all sorts of biomods enthusiasts roaming the halls of the Pentagon’s premiere science division. In 2002 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency launched an ambitious effort aimed at tweaking troops’ physiology to reduce their susceptibility to stress, sleep deprivation, fatigue, pain and blood loss while enhancing their memory and learning. The idea was to help soldiers “perform at their peak, stay at their peak,” one former Darpa official told Wired.

The program was called Metabolic Dominance. It promised to produce America’s first mutant warriors.

Progress was slow — understandably so considering the scope and scale of the effort. In 2007 Tony Tether, then Darpa director, downplayed Metabolic Dominance, signaling the beginning of the end of the program. “We’re making it possible for people to be all that they can be, not making them be better than they can be,” Tether told Wired.

By 2008 the science agency had all but abandoned Metabolic Dominance. Herr began his work the next year, studying and advocating biomods for an alphabet soup of military and intelligence clients. In effect, Herr helped pick up the pieces from Darpa’s initial, failed effort.

In 2009 Herr was assigned to a Pentagon-funded project aimed at understanding “unit cohesion.” That is, what makes one group of soldiers keep fighting through hunger, thirst, exhaustion, confusion, and the deaths of comrades. Unit cohesion has won and lost conflicts since the beginning of warfare, but it was still poorly understood.

For his unit cohesion study, Herr interviewed Army infantrymen, Navy submariners and Air Force drone operators. Partway into the two-year study Herr had an epiphany. “The ‘aha’ moment,” Herr tells Danger Room, “was seeing a link between an objective physiological phenomenon — knowing the effects on the body and brain of stress hormones — and how that matched with all the literature on unit cohesion.”

In other words, Herr had a vision of the stress hormones that our glands pump into our bloodstreams in life-or-death situations, and, in turn, impact the behavior of trained combat units. Tracing this physiological blueprint for combat effectiveness, Herr realized it could be altered biologically. “All of sudden the Matrix made sense,” Herr says, referencing the secret world of the eponymous 1999 sci-fi film.

The military could select troops and their officers for their unique, inborn ability to cope with stress. Or it could directly tweak a soldier’s body functions — re-balancing the normal hormonal cocktail so the soldier doesn’t panic, doesn’t retreat and keeps on fighting, even when the odds are against him and any normal person would just give up.

Specific enhancement methods Herr studied include: focused diet and exercise regimens; injections of the stress-inhibiting brain molecule neuropeptide Y; electroshock-style Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to boost thinking; and gene therapy for enhancing a whole host of body functions by literally altering a person’s DNA with viruses or chemicals.

Following the unit-cohesion study, Herr began teaching individual self-enhancement techniques in Washington, D.C. and Indiana. His students were officers and civilians slated to deploy to Afghanistan under a Pentagon program that embeds American mentors in the Afghan government. Among other tricks, Herr instructed them to minimize brain-stimulating blue light in order to protect their sleep cycles; eat small, frequent, protein-rich meals to maintain steady cognition; and exercise in order to biochemically neutralize the steady stream of stress hormones that advisers experience in their year-long, sometimes dangerous deployments.

Herr says the curriculum fed into his other projects, many of which are classified. “I can’t really talk about those,” he says. Clearly, the techniques Herr taught to the advisers could also be applied to pilots, sub and carrier crews and frontline infantry, for whom the stress is even greater and the work even more critical to U.S. national defense.

But for these combatants, the Pentagon wants to go beyond merely encouraging self-enhancement. Patrick Lin, a professor at California Polytechnic State, notes the military’s “ongoing interest in using pharmaceuticals, such as modafinil (a cognitive enhancer), dietary supplements, as well as gene therapy to boost the performance of warfighters.”

And in February the British Royal Society identified four small-scale DARPA biomodification efforts focusing on stress-reduction and neurological enhancement, plus an obscure Air Force program aimed at the “exploitation of external stimulant technology” to enable airmen “to receive and process greater amounts of operationally relevant information.” That’s generally understood to mean drugs.

Herr says defense planners are discussing a comprehensive strategy to unite these programs and coordinate growing military investment in modification technologies. “What I’ve been working on is trying to support and guide that discussion.” To that end, he has briefed the Defense Science Board, a panel of the Pentagon’s top technology advisers.

A comprehensive biomods strategy would get the Pentagon back to the same conceptual point it was at a decade ago at the launch of Metabolic Dominance — and prove that U.S. military leaders are serious about preparing for the coming era of mutant warfare.

Whether or not the Pentagon is ready, the biomods bug is spreading, spurred by government programs and, increasingly, privately funded research all over the world. But Herr cautions against expecting biomods to transform society and warfare tomorrow. “We’re still in the foundational phase.”

For its part, the National Intelligence Council expects some resistance to biomods. “Moral and ethical challenges to human augmentation are inevitable,” the Council advised. Americans, especially, tend to have deep reservations about changing people’s biology, Herr points out. That doesn’t mean they won’t do it. He points out increasing acceptance of cognitive-enhancing drugs among American college students. “Seventy to 80 percent of upperclassman have at least once taken these drugs illegally to get better grades,” he says. “If the younger generation in our country is more comfortable with this, then that would make the use of these kinds of things in society, and by extension the military, very different.”

But the U.S. is still likely to move more slowly on biomods than say, China or Russia. “Other countries are probably much more likely to take advantage of these [technologies],” Herr says. “The question will be how they do it.”

“Other countries are also interested in these areas but are not so open as the U.S. about what they are doing, so it is difficult to know exactly what is going on in many cases,” notes Rod Flower, a professor at the William Harvey Research Institute in the U.K. and the chair of the Royal Society’s biomods study. It’s equally hard to tell to which terrorists, militants and criminal groups these countries might have ties — and whether new biological weaponry might proliferate through these channels.

The best-case scenario for biomods, Herr says, is widespread, legal and peaceful use of performance-boosting methods to elevate creativity, potentially leading to technological breakthroughs in other fields that in turn could “really enhance the quality of people’s lives.”

“It would be nice to think that the efforts of military scientists could be put to peaceful uses,” says Flower.

Herr says when it comes to weapons-grade mutations, it’s wisest to focus on worst-case scenarios, albeit only the most plausible one. “What can be useful is a body of research which says here are things, which if they happen, would cause major discontinuities.”

The most realistic future biomods apocalypse is one in which a hostile foreign government or terror group finds ways to subtly change a lot of people. “The worst-case scenario is people could start doing things that wouldn’t be recognized,” Herr says. “At least you can do something about if if you know it’s happening.”

Genetic Sneak Attack

Among his duties at Scitor, Herr was tasked with “red teaming” the performance-enhancement field on behalf of the Defense Department in order to assess the approach America’s rivals are taking to the technology. Drawing on his childhood conversations with his world-traveling parents, Herr concluded that military biomodifications could develop very differently in other countries.

Herr says he achieved a breakthrough in his red-teaming in 2010, while in Boston attending what he describes as a “totally academic, non-military” conference on gene therapy, which typically involves “infecting” a person with a specially tailored virus that can modify DNA and in principle, cure a disease or correct a defect.

But fixing genes is hard. Damaging them is a lot easier, one of the speakers at the Boston conference admitted. “He said if our goal was figuring out how to create muscular dystrophy, we’ve been very successful, but if our goal is to treat it, we’re far from the goal,” Herr recalls. “He meant it as a laugh line. But I’m sitting in the back thinking … it’s kind of scary. They know how to break us but don’t know how to fix us.”

In one dire scenario, an army might attack its enemies by changing their physiology to make them dumber, slower, more afraid. In The Atlantic recently, two researchers even discussed the possibility of governments or terror groups genetically assassinating enemy leaders by tailoring cancers specifically to the target’s DNA. The authors pointed out that the U.S. State Department already surreptitiously collects DNA samples from foreign dignitaries.

There are several ways these theoretical bio-attacks could be accomplished. At an August war game hosted by the Army, Herr and other experts said biological agents could be slipped into an enemy’s food or water supplies or dispersed by air. Herr says it could also be possible to secretly add an agent to a commercial product. “Someone thinks he’s taking protein powder but he’s really taking God-knows-what.”

If America gets caught unaware by some future bio-assault, it won’t be because Herr didn’t try to prepare us. After three years at Scitor, this fall Herr struck out on his own with an ambitious plan to advance the biomods field. He started two companies: one, a research firm called Helicase; the other, a sort of personal consultancy called Cognitrition that Herr says will offer clients advice on “enhancing cognitive performance through nutrition and day-to-day activity.”

Anticipatory Computing

I was so intrigued when I came across a new iPad app called MindMeld that is based on the emerging science of “anticipatory computing.”

Using video and voice chat capabilities similar to Skype, MindMeld not only facilitates the discussion, but also adds pertinent photos or videos to the conversation as it interprets what is being said.

We tend to worry about computers that are smarter than we are, automating our skills and taking our jobs. But if computers become more human-like in their thinking, adding our own emotional values to everything we think is important, the heartless machine-only qualities of these technologies will disappear, moving computers away from the paradigm of human-replacer to something more akin to human-enhancer. Here’s what I see happening.

The MindMeld Approach

“We have a predictive model that changes second to second and surfaces relevant information without searching,” says Tuttle. He views this as an effective application of “anticipatory computing” because of the predictive nature of its computational decision-making.

Over time, MindMeld will accrue intelligence as it becomes better at reading and aggregating ambient data.

Capturing Real Human Intelligence

Artificial intelligence only goes so far. But finding a way to capture pieces of real human intelligence can give us far more pertinent information.

As example, if someone conducts a typical search on a search engine, the connecting path between the search terms and the final destination is a very real piece of human intelligence.

Certainly not everyone will agree on the final site selected from a set of search terms. But that will improve over time.

According to Futurist John Smart, in 1998 the average online search phrase consisted of 2 words. Today, the average search contains 5.2 words, trending towards something far longer, more akin to a natural question of 8-10 words.

Over time, capturing millions of “paths” will yield a base of growing intelligence based on the cumulative thinking of everyone involved.

Similarly, when groups of people get into a conversation, and a variety of images are displayed, a selection process where users click on applicable images to help refine the “yield,” the anticipatory computing process will get much smarter, and more relevant, over time.

Via: "The Futurist Speaker"

ROBOT PAINTS YOUR SLEEP PATTERN

Measuring sleep usually involves attaching sensors to a person's head and then creating basic charts and graphs based on brain waves. Now a robot is using similar technology to create art. It's part of the "Sleep Art Experience," a six-week project being promoted by five Ibis-brand hotels in France, Germany and Great Britain.

It starts with 80 sensors embedded in hotel room mattresses. The sensors record sleep variables including motion, temperature and sound between midnight and 7 am. That data is transmitted via Wi-Fi to a robot housed in a studio in Paris. The robot uses an algorithm to convert the data into art, which is expressed through a series of brushstrokes on a black canvas. The result is a beautiful depiction of what an individual's sleep looks like, blending together the best of science and art.

Forty participants will have their sleep patterns turned into possibly the coolest piece of bedroom art ever. Registration for the Paris dates have already passed, but if you're in the Berlin or London area this month, check out Ibis' Facebook page to enter for a chance to participate.

Uploading A Honey Bee’s Brain Into A Flying InsectoBot

By George Dvorsky,

A new project has been announced in which scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Sussex are hoping to create the first accurate computer simulation of a honey bee brain — and then upload it into an autonomous flying robot.

This is obviously a huge win for science — but it could also save the world. The researchers hope a robotic insect could supplement or replace the shrinking population of honey bees that pollinate essential plant life.

Called the "Green Brain Project," it was recently given £1 million (USD $1,614,700) by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), as well as hardware donations from the NVIDIA corporation.

Specifically, NVIDIA will provide them with high-performance graphical processing units called GPU accelerators. This will allow the researchers to simulate aspects of a honey bee's brain by using massively paralleled desktop PCs. 

And indeed, the researchers are going to need all the computational power they can get; it may appear that insects have simple minds — but their brains can be extremely complex.

Now, it should be noted that the researchers aren't trying to emulate a complete honey bee brain, but rather two specific and complex functions within it, namely vision and sense of smell. Once complete, they will upload those models into a robotic honey bee so that it can act autonomously.

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"This is an important further advance over current work on brain models because it is becoming more and more clear that an essential aspect of brain function is that the brain is not acting in isolation but in constant interaction with the body and the environment," they note in their proposal, "This concept of 'embodiment' and its consequences for cognition are important insights of modern cognitive science and will become equally important for modern neuroscience."

By isolating and modeling these particular functions, the researchers hope to provide their flying robot with the cognitive power required to perform basic tasks — and without a set of pre-programmed instructions. It is hoped, for example, that the robotic bee will be able to detect particular odors or gasses in the same way that real bee can identify certain flowers.

To help them with their work, the researchers will collaborate with Martin Giurfa of Toulouse, an expert in all aspects of bee brain anatomy, physiology, and bee cognition and behavior.

Should they be successful, it would mark an important moment in technological history: The first robot brain that can perform complex tasks as proficiently as the animal its trying to emulate.

The Green Brain Project could further our understanding of both artificial intelligence and the neuroscientific underpinnings of animal cognition. But also, along with the National Science Foundation-funded Robobees project (led by Harvard University), the advent of an artificial pollinator could provide a solution (either temporarily or permanently) to the problem of dwindling honey bee populations — an organism that's currently dealing with the devastating effects of colony collapse disorder.

In fact, the artificial honey bee may be the first of many robots we introduce into the environment to make up for the current era of widespread extinctions.

Via: "IO9"

Gadgets To Recognize You Through Touch

We’ve already seen the first wave of this technology in Disney’s amazingmulti-touch houseplants. Now, it’s being turned to humans. Whenever a user touches a display or object of any sort, their Capacitive Fingerprintingtechnique fires electrical frequencies through that user’s body. And by analyzing the exact impedance--the frequencies’ interaction with the particular biochemical makeup of your body--the system can identify you and whomever else is around you tapping at the screen, too.

In fact, the ID technology is so hypersensitive, it won’t even recognize your body’s state eight hours later. “It is not that it is too sensitive, but that the condition and electrical properties of the human body change with time and location,” Poupyrev tells Co.Design. “So, at this point we’re investigating its use for short-term interaction that happens in simple games or in location-based entertainment.”

Indeed, Capacitive Fingerprinting is almost most exciting when it’s connected to devices that aren’t normally as omniscient as smartphones and tablets, but the countless slew of absolutely perfect objects--the tables and the doorknobs--that our world has labeled “dumb.” Or as Pouprev puts it a bit more poetically: “A physical, inanimate object can ‘feel’ who is touching. So, it is kind of magical.”

Via: "Fasct Co. Design"