Important Innovations Collection

Pentagon's DARPA Seeking JetPack Prototypes Source:  JetPack Stock Image Portable Personal Mobility Vehicles The US Pentagon's DARPA, or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, wants to equip the US military with highly advanced and reliable flying jetpacks, also known as portable personal air mobility systems.  They have invited companies to send their prototypes for jetpacks and other unique, personal, portable flying technologies for development. Technologies of Interest DARPA's level of interest for new forms of personal air mobility is fascinating.  Beside jetpacks, technologies of interest include powered wing suits, powered gliders and powered parafoils which, according to DARPA, "can leverage emerging electric propulsion technologies, hydrogen cells or conventional heavy fuel propulsion systems." No Pilots License Required DARPA wants these vehicles to be extremely easy to operate.  Additionally, they should require very little training and no pilots li...

Flying Carriers With Swarming Gremlin Drones                   Source:  DARPA's Flying Carrier and Gremlin Drones DARPA R&D Project Stranger Than Science Fiction The Pentagon's DARPA (the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency) is working at forever changing the face of warfare.  They are developing for the US military huge, flying aircraft carriers.  The carriers would be loaded with highly advanced drones, called Gremlins, instead of fighter jets.  Military officials believe the carriers would be safer in the the sky than on the ocean where they are becoming increasingly vulnerable to long range missile attacks.  The Pentagon is particularly concerned about new maneuverable, ballistic missile technology from China. The Gremlins The US Navy currently has 11 nuclear powered carriers.  Each carrier contains up to 80 fighter jets and 6,000 personnel.  DARPA's plan is to convert co...

Reusable, Affordable, Flying, Highly Advanced Drones                                Source:  DARPA's Gremlins Program For the US Military and Multi-Purpose Missions DARPA, the US Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, has a fascinating, highly advanced drone program underway to launch and catch airborne drones.  DARPA calls it the Gremlins program and it just completed the first flight test of its X-61A drone vehicle that is designed for airborne launch, free flight, swarming and then retrieval in the air, for re-use thereafter.  Drones Within Inches of Retrieval What DARPA is striving for is the aerial recovery of multiple drones that are low cost and reusable, unmanned aerial systems or  GAV (Gremlin Aerial Vehicles). The test drones each flew two hours autonomously and successfully tested for all formation flying positions and for safety.  But, with...

DARPA's Blackjack Satellite Program on a Space Rideshare Source:  Loft Orbit Small Sats, Low Cost, Low Earth Orbit Ridesharing is a growing megatrend in Space.  A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will fly on a ridesharing mission, early in 2021, carrying a Loft Orbiting satellite with a DARPA Blackjack Pit Boss mission system inside for a space demonstration.  Loft buys space buses (satellites) and rents space.  The US Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will be flying onboard the SpaceX rocket with many other customer payloads.  DARPA's Blackjack programs aims to deploy low cost, small, low earth orbit satellites into operation for the US Military. Create Amazon Business Account Space Experiment DARPA's testing of Blackjack will commence in early 2021.  The experiment is called Sagittarius A.  It's designed to demonstrate any risks or problems before the main Blackjack satellites go into production and launch in late 2...

DARPA's Latest Artificial Intelligence Development Program Source:  DARPA Artificial Intelligence AI Capable of Accessing Its Expertise The US Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA is building an AI system that is capable of admitting its own incompetence.  DARPA wants this new AI system particularly for the US military where the margin of error is zero. Can or Can't Do It's called the Competency Aware Machine Learning Program.  The goal is to develop AI that learns from previous experiences, models its own behavior and applies that to new situations.  Specifically DARPA scientists want an AI system that can determine if it's capable of doing something and let people know if it's not capable of the task. 3rd Wave of AI This effort is all about turning machine learning systems, that are now useful, into trusted, collaborative partners.  It's a four year program and part of DARPA's $2 billion investment in creating th...