Registration begins on December 1, and the balloons will appear on December 5. The first to submit the latitude and longitude of all 10 balloons walks away with the cash. Pretty cool. Full rules at: [DARPA via BoingBoing]

Based on what Lockheed Martin’s John Mengucci is saying, the contract’s main focus is to make preparations for attacks through our most beloved medium:

“New network threats and attacks require revolutionary protection concepts. Through this project, as well as our cyber Mission Maker initiatives, we are working to enhance cyber security and ensure that warfighters can fight on despite cyber attacks.”

We’re not really seeing much more information about the details of what Lockheed and Microsoft will be doing, but we can start shouting about Skynet anyway, right? [The Register via Slashdot]

Photo by YOO – Social Software for Business

Watching this video of the Precision Urban Hopper jumping over a fence, makes my inner kid all giddy and excited. It also makes my outer nerd wet. It has been invented by Boston Dynamics, the creators of the scary BigDog.

The Precision Urban Hopper—developed for Darpa—is a GPS-guided robot designed for exploration of urban warfare environments. It has a piston-actuated leg that will launch it over any obstacle up to 7.6 metres high. For the record: The piston-actuated leg should be obligatory in every single RC car, skateboard and Converse shoe from now on. Who is with me? Write to your member of parliament now, dammit. [BBC News]

Last year, DARPA granted aerospace firm, Aeronvironment, a chunk of change and six-months to demonstrate a bird-sized Nano Air Vehicle (NAV). This video shows the result: the “smallest ever free-flying aircraft to hover and climb with flapping wings”.

The image above comes from Aeronvironment, and shows what it wants the prototype in the video below to ultimately look like. DARPA’s goal is to have a 10-gram aircraft with a 7.5cm wingspan. They want it to get into tight hiding spaces and send back GPS and image data.

Aeronvironment’s progress is also notable because such robots previously couldn’t carry their own batteries, and had to use guide wires.

“It is capable of climbing and descending vertically, flying sideways left and right, as well as forward and backward, under remote control,” says the company.

To achieve the amazing speeds, the sub utilises a hydrodynamic effect known as supercavitation. When the Underwater Express achieves enough speed, a gas bubble envelops the vessel and reduces drag allowing it to achieve speeds not otherwise possible—not unlike the USS Enterprise’s warp field. The submarine’s designer, Electric Boat, is working on a one-quarter scale model for sea trials off the coast of Rhode Island. If the trials are successful, Electric Boat will begin production on a full scale 30m submarine. Seals had better watch out, I doubt the Underwater Express will feel remorse as it rams into adorable marine life at 100 knots. Unlike the regular express where all you see is bums peeing on the wall, here you get to see sharks explode. [Popular Science]

No, seriously, cyborg crickets. This is a good thing!

Why? Simple. When a building collapses, say from an earthquake or a terrorist bombing, survivors are often trapped in the rubble. Sometimes they’re rescued, and sometimes, due to the nature of being buried alive under tons and even tonnes of rock (something we do lose sleep over), they aren’t.

Enter the cyborg crickets. What the Pentagon hopes to do is make these six-legged pests into chemical sniffers and eventually even human sniffers when catastrophe strikes.

They’ll do this by implanting electrodes into winged insects to control their wing muscles. The inaugural class of crickets, cicadas and katydids are already being worked on as I type this, so that their usual calls and communication will instead only occur in the presence of certain chemicals.

Additionally, scientists would “install” an acoustic sensor on our new six-legged saviors that’s “designed to respond to the altered calls of other insects.” Ultimately, this final modification would ensure a cascade effect amongst the insects, so that their signals are eventually picked up by ground-based human-controlled transceivers.

So the next time you’re trapped in a collapsed building, don’t crush that little guy who’s chirping madly into your ear. He may very well be trying to save your life. [New Scientist]

The defence research agency has announced they’ll be funding the EATR project—which stands for Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot—which aims to build a lumbering mechanical creature that lives off of flesh, both plant and animal:

EATR is an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance military missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling. The patent pending robotic system can find, ingest and extract energy from biomass in the environment, as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, diesel, propane and solar) when suitable.

It’s actually a steam-powered machine, which employs a biomass furnace that can be fed by all manner of organic materials, to be harvested with its “gripper” claw and chainsaw.

The EATR’s ideal source of fuel would probably be foliage, not humans, but there are just too many red flags here. Claws? Chainsaws? “Organic matter” and “biomass” euphemisms? Not to mention this is the second death-powered machine we’ve seen in as many weeks. The project is set to be completed in about 90 days, so enjoy the next three months, folks. [Register via Switched]

Program manager Todd Hylton is aiming for “an approximately 10-gram aircraft that can hover for extended periods, can fly at forward speeds up to 10 meters per second, can withstand 2.5-meter-per-second wind gusts.” Right now, though, the teeny robobird can only fly for about 20 seconds at a time. But with some hard work, some day we will produce a robotic hummingbird that will strike fear into the hearts of our enemies. Wait, is fear the right word? [Wired]

I believe it is not in our American character to follow—but to lead. And it is time for us to lead once again. I am here today to set this goal: we will devote more than three percent of our GDP to research and development… This represents the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American history.

Obama plans to funnel money into new initiatives such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), which is to be a cousin of DARPA, the agency that had a large hand in the development of the internet.

The bottom line is that if you’re a fan of new technologies being developed on US soil, you should be pretty damned excited. [Salon via Purns]

The first part of that, the true part, represents a huge step in the mechanical control of living things. It’s far from the first foray into insect mind control, but by far the most precise—this specimen, commanded by six radio-actuated electrodes on the beetle’s muscles and brain, could be piloted around the room like a tiny RC plane.

The hardware isn’t much of a burden for the beetle, which is capable of taking flight with more than twice the 1.3g mass of the apparatus on board. The remaining payload will probably be filled with camera gear, as this project is funded by DARPA (natch) for surveillance purposes.

Unfortunately there’s no video of the demo yet, but we have been furnished with this unintentionally funny picture of the event, which may or may not contain the bug in question. Can you spot it? [Tech-on]