Sign up for our Technology Newsletter 
DARPA Goes Robtic
The U.S. military is funding research for a mind-controlled prosthetic arm that is surgically implanted into the user’s body.
“This is the most advanced arm in the world,” Johnny Matheny, who lost his left arm to cancer in 2008 and demonstrated the robotic arm for DARPA, said in a statement. “This one can do anything your natural arm can do, with the exception of the Vulcan V. But unless I meet a Vulcan, I won’t need it.”
Matheny showed the arm during Demo Day for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the military’s research unit, which was held Wednesday at the Pentagon. The device was developed at the Research and Exploratory Development Department at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
The robotic arm is attached to a piece of metal that is surgically implanted into the bone of the user’s arm in technique called osseointegration. Matheny is the first person in the U.S. to have undergone the procedure, according to the U.S. Army.
The Army called the system a “true man/machine interface.”
The mind-controlled aspect of the arm comes into play via the nerves and muscles in what remains of the user’s arm. Those tissues send signals to the robotic arm, which responds to them as a real arm would.
“This is part of the Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program, where we set out to restore near-natural upper extremity control to our military service members who have lost limbs in service of our country,” said Dr. Justin C. Sanchez, director of the Biological Technologies Office at DARPA, in a statement. “The goal is to control the arm as naturally as possible.”
The robotic arm, according to Sanchez, has the same size, weight, shape and grip strength as an adult biological arm.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/darpa-shows-off-mind-controlled-robotic-arm.html
IBM Still Talking Up SyNAPSE
IBM has unveiled the latest stage in its plans to generate a computer system that copies the human brain, calculating tasks that are relatively easy for humans but difficult for computers.
As part of the firm’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project, IBM researchers have been working with Cornell University and Inilabs to create the programming language with $53m in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
First unveiled two years ago this month, the technology – which mimics both the size and power of humanity’s most complex organ – looks to solve the problems created by traditional computing models when handling vast amounts of high speed data.
IBM explained the new programming language, perhaps not in layman’s terms, by saying it “breaks the mould of sequential operation underlying today’s von Neumann architectures and computers” and instead “is tailored for a new class of distributed, highly interconnected, asynchronous, parallel, large-scale cognitive computing architectures”.
That, in English, basically means that it could be used to create next generation intelligent sensor networks that are capable of perception, action and cognition, the sorts of mental processes that humans take for granted and perform with ease.
Dr Dharmendra Modha, who heads the programme at IBM Research, expanded on what this might mean for the future, sayng that the time has come to move forward into the next stage of information technology.
“Today, we’re at another turning point in the history of information technology. The era that Backus and his contemporaries helped create, the programmable computing era, is being superseded by the era of cognitive computing.
“Increasingly, computers will gather huge quantities of data, reason over the data, and learn from their interactions with information and people. These new capabilities will help us penetrate complexity and make better decisions about everything from how to manage cities to how to solve confounding business problems.”
The hardware for IBM’s cognitive computers mimic the brain, as they are built around small “neurosynaptic cores”. The cores are modeled on the brain, and feature 256 “neurons” (processors), 256 “axons” (memory) and 64,000 “synapses” (communications between neurons and axons).
IBM suggested that potential uses for this technology could include a pair of glasses which assist the visually impaired when navigating through potentially hazardous environments. Taking in vast amounts of visual and sound data, the augmented reality glasses would highlight obstacles such as kerbs and cars, and steer the user clear of danger.
Other uses could include intelligent microphones that keep track of who is speaking to create an accurate transcript of any conversation.
In the long term, IBM hopes to build a cognitive computer scaled to 100 trillion synapses. This would fit inside a space with a volume of no more than two litres while consuming less than one kilowatt of power.
The U.S. Is Falling Behind
February 16, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on The U.S. Is Falling Behind
The U.S. government is losing a race in cyberspace — a social-networking race for the hearts and minds of the Internet community, a computer security expert said Wednesday.
Other countries — and many companies — are using social-networking tools to their advantage, while the U.S. government has taken tiny steps forward, said Rand Waltzman, a program manager focused on cybersecurity at the U.S.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The Chinese government pays citizens to patrol social-networking sites and dispute negative talk about all levels of government or any aspect of Chinese life, and companies such as Dell and Best Buy are training workers to respond to complaints on Facebook and other social-networking services, Waltzman said at the Suits and Spooks security conference in Arlington, Virginia.
U.S. regulations prevent the government from undertaking similar campaigns, he said. “Any time you want to go to the bathroom, you need presidential approval,” he said.
The U.S. will not be able to protect its residents if it cannot engage in its own covert social-media operations, Waltzman said.
Waltzman told about a U.S. special forces unit in Iraq in 2009 that attacked an insurgent paramilitary group, killed 16 of the members of the group and seized a “huge” weapons cache. As soon as the U.S. unit left the scene, the Iraqi group returned, put the bodies on prayer mats, and uploaded a photograph from a cheap mobile phone, he said. The group put out a press release in English and Arabic.
Pentagon Practices Cyberwar
June 23, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on Pentagon Practices Cyberwar
A mock Internet where the Pentagon can practice cyberwar games — complete with software that simulates human behavior under multiple military threat levels — is due to be up and running in a year’s time, according to a published report.
Called the National Cyber Range, the computer network mimics the architecture of the Internet so military planners can study the effects of cyberweapons by acting out attack and defense scenarios, Reuters says.
Planning for the Cyber Range was carried out by Lockheed Martin, which won a $30.8 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant, and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which won $24.7 million.
Cyber Range plans call for the ability to simulate offensive and defensive measures of the caliber that nations might be able to carry out. DARPA wants the range to support multiple tests and scenarios at the same time and to ensure that they don’t interfere with each other. “The Range must be capable of operating from Unclassified to Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information/Special Access Program with multiple simultaneous tests operating at different security levels and compartments,” according to DARPA’s announcement of the project.
IBM Outs Fast Graphene Transistor
Big Blue is in the process of showing of its latest graphene transistor that is capable of executing 155 billion cycles per second. IBM’s test revealed that the transistor is 50 percent faster than previous versions of the experimental transistors.
That said the transistor has a cut-off frequency of 155GHz. The previous transistor had a frequency of 100GHz when IBM showed it off last year.
IBM’s Yu-Ming Lin stated that the research further showed that high-performance, graphene-based transistors can be asembled at an economical cost using standard semiconductor manufacturing processes. Meaning, commercial production of graphene chips should be happening in the near future.