research projects agency

And then there were eleven. Yesterday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced that it had narrowed the field for its Urban Grand Challenge to just under a dozen robotic vehicles. 35 teams were part of this week's qualifying rounds.

The finalists, which include a truck, a Prius and a sedan, will be competing this weekend for $3.5 million in prize money. To finish, each robot has to complete a 60 mile course in under six hours. And there's going to be live traffic—roughly 50 human-driven vehicles will be on the road. The robots will even have to deal with four-way-stops. Which would be amazing, since that's something most humans can't even figure out. Tomorrow, watch the race live here.—Gregory Mone

More than 130 veterans of the Iraq war now face the daunting challenge of learning to live with a missing arm. To make that transition easier, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, has launched a $55-million project that pools the efforts of prosthetics experts nationwide to create a thought-controlled bionic arm that duplicates the functions of a natural limb. If all goes well, by 2009 the agency will petition the Food and Drug Administration to put the arm through clinical trials.

See the photo gallery for an illustrated look at a creepy new line of defense

If you need to temporarily blind someone, consider the DEF3. It's the latest flashlight dreamed up by the U.S. government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-and designed by optics experts Science Applications International Corporation with flashlight maker SureFire-for use as an Army-issue non-lethal weapon.

The U.S. military relies heavily on satellites for communications, navigation, surveillance and other essential activities. To protect these satellites, some military strategists say we need to deploy defenses that include space weapons. The problem: It's far more expensive and technologically challenging to defend a satellite than to attack one.

Flying an F-16 fighter jet on a long reconnaissance mission is about as efficient as driving a Formula One racecar to the grocery store. Its swept wings have great maneuverability at high speeds, but to stay aloft for hours at a time, you’d be better off with a slower, straight-wing craft such as the U.S. Air Force’s unmanned reconnaissance vehicle Global Hawk. But what if you need to monitor vast tracts of land and respond at a moment’s notice to enemy activity?

The military garb designed by mechanical engineer Homayoon Kazerooni at the University of California, Berkeley, is anything but standard issue. Kazerooni’s 90-pound battlesuit, dubbed BLEEX for Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton, consists of a pair of robotic legs and backpack-like frame. Wearing the prototype, a soldier can haul up to 75 extra pounds with little effort. BLEEX is still a far cry from the superhuman combat gear envisioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is funding the research.

A visit to the spa, circa 2015: Your session begins with a battery of mental tests—from visual puzzles to memory quizzes to games that measure reaction time. After your results are evaluated, you don a lightweight helmet housing electromagnetic coils and relax while a certified “neurotrainer” consults a 3-D image of your brain to adjust the helmet settings. You feel oddly energized as the device zaps your gray matter with painless energy pulses. After a few minutes, you visit the smart bar for a custom regimen of brain-enhancing pills.

High-altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) could soon be capable of staying aloft for weeks at a time, providing telecommunications services or gathering military intelligence over a future battlefield.