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The main problem with MAVs has to do with the way they respond (or don’t respond) to dynamic environments--things like shifting or gusting winds, moving bodies, and other variables that have to be accounted for in realtime. MAVs are tiny, so there’s not a lot of space for computing assets or sensor payloads, and that leads to a sort of intractable problem: how can engineers make these things smaller and more capable while also adding increased situational awareness and better in-flight processing?

When facing a tough problem like this a little biomimicry never hurts, and that’s exactly where the Pentagon is looking with its recent contracts. If two research stipends recently handed down are any indication, the micro-drones of the future may have tiny hair-like sensors all over their bodies and big, compound eyes.

The cilia-like hairs will serve to keep the drones’ hovering and flight stable by sensing changes in air flow at the tiniest levels. That means the drone could sense a wind gust coming shortly before it arrives, allowing it to compensate for the change in circumstance. It would also aid in maintaining overall stability during flight, as the MAVs central processor would possess a constant awareness of--and the ability to manipulate--the boundary flow layer of air surrounding the drone as it hovers and flies.

The bug-like compound eyes would similarly help MAVs navigate in cluttered spaces by increasing the amount of visual data available to the drones’ processors. An on-board minicomputer would process images in realtime, using those visual cues to automatically avoid obstacles and navigate cleanly and efficiently.

[Danger Room]

And even recognize your intentions

Of a handful of contracts just handed out by the Army, two are notable for their unique ISR capabilities. One would arm drones with facial recognition software that can remember faces so targets can’t disappear into crowds. The other sounds far more unsettling: a human behavior engine capable of stacking informant info against intelligence data against other evidence to predict a person’s intent. That’s right: the act of determining whether you are friend or foe could be turned over to the machines.

That’s a bit disquieting whether you are an insurgent warfighter or not. But back to the overarching topic at hand: The U.S. military is pulling in more ISR data than it knows what to do with these days, a lot of it useless noise that’s inconsequential to ongoing operations. And, as DR notes, the strategy in Afghanistan has changed from one of winning hearts and minds through nation building projects to targeting specific bad guys.

The hard part is keeping up with the bad guys, and that’s where Progeny Systems Corporation’s “Long Range, Non-cooperative, Biometric Tagging, Tracking and Location” system comes into play. The facial recognition layer of its technology is pretty standard: take some 2-D pictures of a target’s face, use them to build a 3-D model, and then use that 3-D model to recognize the face later.

But that’s not necessarily easy. It’s difficult enough for computers to pull off biometric facial recognition when the subject is stationary and looking straight at the camera. Toss in the many variables inherent in aerial ISR--a moving target who may be in profile or looking downward, a moving drone, low resolution cameras, etc.--and it’s a major challenge.

Progeny’s system, if it works the way the company and the Army envision it, needs just 50 pixels between the target’s eyes in a 2-D image to build the 3-D model. “Any pose, any expression, any face,” the company’s lead biometric researcher tells Danger Room. From that model stored in Progeny’s database, the system could identify the target from an even lower resolution image or video.

The closer the drone is to the subject, the better all of this works. But progeny also layers in a second kind of recognition that can work at more than 750 feet. This “soft biometric” system basically takes in a bunch of non-facial but otherwise outwardly relevant data--skin color, height and build, age, gender--to build a larger kind of model for its vision algorithms to work with. If a body is moving through the crowd, Progeny claims that a drone circling high overhead can keep track of him or her simply using this larger, whole-body identification system.

But what good is tracking if you don’t know who your enemies are? Another contract handed out to Charles River Analytics seeks to develop a human behavior engine known as Adversary Behavior Acquisition, Collection, Understanding, and Summarization (ABACUS). It mashes up all kinds of behavioral data into a system that churns out an assessment of adversarial intent, determining if a subject has enough built up resentment toward the U.S. and its aims to be a potential threat.

So pretty soon the drones may know who you are, where you’re going, and what you’re planning to do when you get there.

[Danger Room]

That’s not to say this is the first time a secret or hidden message has been encoded into a living molecule. But the method is quite simple, requiring no gene sequencing equipment, microscopes, or other scarce and expensive laboratory gear to extract the coded message. Some simple LEDs and a smartphone would suffice, allowing the recipient to receive the printed microbes through the mail and quickly and easily unlock the message.

It works like so: The team took seven strains of common Escherichia coli bacteria and engineered each to glow a different color under the right light via fluorescent proteins. The bacteria are then grown in pre-selected sequences of paired dots, with each pair representing a letter or other symbol like a numeric digit. These pairs can then be imprinted on a sheet of nitrocellulose and sent through the post like any other piece of paper.

At the other end, the recipient simply has to regrow the bacteria (which isn’t difficult) and place it under the right kind of light or expose it to antibiotics to make it glow, revealing the coded message. Moreover, the bacteria can be further engineered to only express their colors after specific periods of time, or to self-destruct after a certain period in proper Hollywood spy style. They can also be tailored to respond differently to different antibiotics, revealing the true message only when a certain kind of antibiotic--known by the intended recipient--is used.

The drawbacks: there are only a limited number of antibiotics in the world, so it wouldn’t be difficult to brute force a coded message by using all available antibiotics to reveal the true message. But this doesn’t bother the researchers behind the development, as they are less concerned with the cloak and dagger applications of their technology anyhow. They’re more interested in developing new ways to watermark genetically modified organisms with “biological barcodes” to protect intellectual property and make the world safer for modified life.

[Nature]

The Naval Strike Missile is a fire-and-forget cruise missile--that is, you preprogram the missile with a target, and it finds its own way there. The 900-pound NSM is super-nimble and equipped with GPS and other inertial and terrain-based systems that allow it to hug the contours of a coastline, cruise just above the surface of the ocean, or negotiate terrestrial terrain at very low radar-evading altitudes.

The NSM is expected to be a regular payload aboard the F-35 Lightning II when it finally enters service, and if the video below is any indication it will be a formidable adversary. Watch as the missile is launched from a California test range, “sea-skims” low across the Pacific, flies low over an island, and then acquires its target on the far side. Not to give the ending away, but this naval vessel doesn’t stand a chance.

[SmartPlanet]

With its own theme song to boot

Several of them have been chronicled in these pages — click here for a clip of BigDog scrambling to regain its balance after slipping on a patch of ice, for instance. But the below video has the added bonus of a new bluesy theme song, with a beat seemingly written to match BigDog’s jaunty gait.

BigDog uses a system of hyper-responsive hydraulic joints, sensors, accelerometers and gyroscopes to keep it on its four legs. Boston Dynamics says the creature can run at 4 mph, climb slopes up to 35 degrees, walk across a wide range of terrain, and carry 340 pounds. It’s designed to go wherever humans would go, carrying their load without complaint or the urge to sniff the ground every six inches. It’s funded by DARPA, naturally.

In pup mode, it performs a doglike “let’s-play” stretch; later in its life, it gets down to business, leaping like a greyhound and tromping through the snow like an AT-AT walker. Turn up the sound and check it out.

Industry can't keep up with massive helium demand

We’ve reported previously that helium supplies are running short (can we go ahead and coin the term “peak helium?”), but that was at a more macro, global scale. The military’s problem is more specific: it needs to get more reconnaissance aerostats in the sky over Afghanistan, and it can’t find dealers that can fill its tall orders for helium.

Airships like Northrop Grumman’s Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) need a hell of a lot of helium--roughly 800,000 cubic feet per--quantities that commercial dealers can’t seem to reliably meet. In fact, DR reports, when the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency recently put out a request for helium to meet the DoD’s airship needs, no one called back. They had to break down their bulk order into smaller pieces.

That’s not to say we’re completely out of helium, but right now demand seems to be outstripping supply. Helium gas isn’t just good for party favors. Helium has the lowest boiling point of any known readily available gas, so it’s an in-demand gaseous cooling source for things like superconducting magnets in MRI scanners or particle colliders. It’s used in everything from fiber optics to quantum computers.

And, of course, in airships, which brings us back to the problem at hand. The military continues to fuel up more blimps--they can carry way more reconnaissance gear than, say, Predator and Reaper drones, and they can stay aloft for days rather than hours. But there’s really no great way to get at helium in large quantities cheaply and easily. Which means those colorful party balloons may become a lot more expensive at some point in the next decade.

[Danger Room]

That marks a pretty big milestone for space-based defensive capabilities. As of right now, U.S. military forces are extremely reliant upon orbiting hardware like GPS satellites, reconnaissance satellites, and the like. They guide our ships and our planes, augment our missile guidance, and otherwise tell our troops where they are on the map, not to mention providing critical communications.

They are also largely undefended. Space is a big place and it’s difficult to cut down the angle of attack for something orbiting up there in free space. As such, military leaders are increasingly concerned about threats like anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons (remember China’s 2007 ASAT missile test that created all that space debris?), which could effectively put American forces in the dark in the case of all-out warfare.

Enter SASSA, which will act like a radar receiver for orbiting satellites, warning satellite handlers if it perceives incoming threats ranging from ASAT missiles to ground based lasers or signals that could blind it or jam its signals. No one is yet divulging the details of exactly how SASSA will work (this is top secret satellite stuff, after all), but as the Register smartly notes, maybe that’s why we’re being fed just this little nugget of information about the system.

After all, meddling with another state’s satellites is a major offense under international convention, and it’s only something you do if you think you can get away with it. SASSA will make it more difficult for another actor to mess with America’s space-based capabilities. And maybe that’s exactly why they’re getting the word out about SASSA beforehand.

[Aviation Week]