Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2018

As part of the country’s massive re-arming and military modernization efforts, Russia’s defense apparatus has been quietly developing a next-generation suit that will give its wearers enhanced strength, awareness and combat effectiveness, and has reportedly already tested it in battle.

Created as part of the Ratnik (Russian for warrior) system program, the suit isn’t designed for special operations forces, but rather, general infantry use. That’s right — the average Russian infantryman will step outside the wire wearing game changing battle rattle, likely by 2025.

Continue reading “This is Russia’s ‘next generation’ combat armor suit — and it’s straight out of RoboCop” »

Circa 2011 face_with_colon_three

Racing a hydrofoil bicycle through a slalom course!
more Informaton and pictures of this bike at http://www.human-powered-hydrofoils.com/hydrofoils/waterbike/
watch the Trampofoil do the same course even faster: http://youtu.be/jDQDQ_zIxl0
or watch an even faster Waterbike: http://youtu.be/RaYhyeGxYoA

Continue reading “Waterbike Hydrofoil Bicycle” »

Specialty subdivisions of BMW and Range Rover offer bulletproof variants of the luxury automakers’ current models, and other aftermarket companies like Brabus and AddArmor go a step further by making donor vehicles damn-near bombproof. But none of those examples look anywhere near as sturdy as the Armortruck SUV.

Circa 2019

When you imagine an exoskeleton, chances are it might look a bit like the Guardian XO from Sarcos Robotics. The XO is literally a robot you wear (or maybe, it wears you). The suit’s powered limbs sense your movements and match their position to yours with little latency to give you effortless superstrength and endurance—lifting 200 pounds will feel like 10.

Continue reading “Robotic Exoskeletons, Like This One, Are Getting More Practical” »

Circa 2013

“Nanotechnology offers unprecedented possibilities for progress—defeating poverty, starvation, and disease, opening up outer space, and expanding human capacities. But it also brings unprecedented risks—the specter of devastating wars fought with far more powerful weapons of mass destruction.” — Chris Phoenix, Director of Research, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.

Circa 2015 face_with_colon_three

We already have smart guns, but DARPA has taken the next logical step — the defense agency has built smart bullets. The military agency has shown off new footage of its Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance — shortened to EXACTO rounds — that show the smart bullets maneuvering in mid-air to hit moving targets.

Continue reading “Watch DARPA’s magic bullets change course to hit moving targets” »

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have finished the preliminary commissioning of a new 14-tesla magnet at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS). This new sample environment allows researchers to explore the fundamental physics behind complex behavior of quantum matter.

The magnet, which also features an optional dilution refrigerator insert, is the latest low-temperature sample environment to be commissioned at SNS. Weighing 2,670 pounds and standing nearly 7 feet tall, this massive device is an excellent tool for researchers wanting to learn more about materials that exhibit quantum phenomena. Its powerful magnetic field forces quantum particles to behave in an orderly way, giving scientists the opportunity to locate patterns in otherwise disordered quantum systems. And with its refrigerator—which can chill samples to −459.65° F—scientists can essentially “freeze” molecular vibrations in materials that might appear as background noise in neutron scattering studies. This allows for more accurate measurements of the excitations associated with quantum magnets.

“Quantum systems often lack discernible order. This makes it difficult to understand their fundamental characteristics. This new sample environment lets us bring order to these systems we’re interested in studying,” said Matt Stone, a lead instrument scientist at ORNL.

South Korea is developing autonomous robots to recover the remains of soldiers killed in the Korean War.

The excavations will take place in Arrowhead Ridge, a former battlefield inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that bisects the Korean Peninsula.

The droids will use AI to scan underground for bodies of soldiers still missing from the war, which began in 1950 when North Korean communist forces invaded the capitalist south.

Many emerging technologies rely on high-quality lasers. Laser-based LiDAR sensors can provide highly accurate scans of three-dimensional spaces, and as such are crucial in applications ranging from autonomous vehicles to geological mapping technologies and emergency response systems. High-quality lasers are also a key part of the high-speed, high-volume data centers that are the backbone of the internet.

When assessing the quality of a laser, researchers look to the noise in a laser’s frequency, or the number of times the laser’s light wave toggles in each second. Low-quality, “noisy” lasers have more random variations in those toggles, making them useless for systems that are meant to return accurate measurements or convey densely packed information.

At present, lasers with adequately low frequency noise are bulky, expensive and an impractical choice for mass manufacturing. Penn Engineers have set out to solve this problem with a device called a “phase noise filter” that can turn low-cost, compact lasers into those suitable for LiDAR and more.