Charge! Darpa Wants Wireless Power-Up for Troops’ Gadgets

• By Adam Rawnsley
• From  http://www.wired.com/

Phone batteries dying, spider webs of power cords — powering mobile technology can be pretty annoying for the average iPhone or iPad user.  But it’s even more annoying — not to mention potentially dangerous — if you’re a soldier on patrol in Afghanistan losing juice on a critical gadget. Yes, troops in the field use their fair share of handheld gear, too. Now, the Pentagon is hoping to give them a power-up with a wireless charging system.

Darpa, the Defense Department’s advanced research shop, announced Wednesday that it’s looking to build a short-range wireless power transmission system for troops in the field. The transmitter would allow troops to charge up things like GPS without having to stop and plug in. If the system works, a single GI could strap on a battery pack and allow other troops to draw power from it wirelessly at a distance of up to two meters.
The push for wireless power is a problem born of an increasingly technology-equipped military. GIs in the field lug a lot of handheld electronic gadgetry — about five to ten pounds of just battery weight, according to Darpa. On top of that, the Defense Department keeps coming up with ideas for yet more portable electronic gear, from Android-based smart phones to universal translators. All that gear needs juice to keep going on long missions. If troops are out on patrol, they can’t just find a convenient socket to stop and plug in. Darpa’s hoping its wireless power system can prove a solution to energy needs in the field without adding a tangled mess of charger cords.

Wireless power transmission may sound like Tesla-inspired science fiction, but the technology behind it isn’t that exotic. In fact, you may have brushed your teeth with it this morning. Electric toothbrushes use a form of wireless power transmission called inductive coupling. A coil in the plugged-in charging station creates a magnetic field that allows current to transfer when a coil in the toothbrush enters the field. Microwave power transmission, another method of wireless power transfer, uses microwave-beaming antennas to power devices across distances.

There’s already quite a few wireless systems available. Powercast (.pdf) makes a transmitter that uses radio waves to transmit both data and power. For naval super users, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute doctoral student Tristan Lawry has built a system that can shoot power through ship and submarine hulls with ultrasound.

Darpa, however, is looking for a wireless power transmitter that’s customized to the needs of troops in the field. If you plan on pitching the agency, your system needs to have an efficient distribution of power from end-to-end and work with a range of different portable electronic devices. Safety is key, too. Make sure your power transmitter doesn’t easily give up users’ position or have any lingering health effects from radiation.

Photo: U.S. Army/Flickr

Libyan rebels's DIY weapon workshop is a sad combo of "Lawrence of Arabia" meets "Mad Max"

Posted by Alex_Pasternack
From http://www.motherboard.tv/







This really puts the whole DIY-maker-homebrew thing in perspective: Libya’s rebels aren’t just working with a hijacked cell phone network, but hobbling together their own weapons out of discarded military stockpiles. As this Al Jazeera report shows, they’re welding their own rocket launch platforms, affixing helicopter guns to pick-up trucks, and builidng missile firing controls out of light switches.

The ramshackle weaponry is a testament to the ingenuity and determination of the Libyan people, but even with the help of NATO airstrikes, it won’t be enough to destroy the regime. And as The Times’ C.J. Chivers reports, the whole post-apocalyptic weaponry idea is dangerous too. Rebel mechanics aren’t just unfamiliar with the ins-and-outs of say, a 57-millimeter rocket: they’re not very expert at aiming them either. The weapons haven’t done much to deter the military, but they have likely driven up civilian casualties and friendly-fire incidents. “Many Libyan rebels – more spirited than experienced – nonetheless approve of their rocket brigades,” writes Chivers. “With their almost sci-fi aesthetic, and the tremendous noise and show they make when fired, they are a morale-booster for troops who know little of effective tactics or of how modern weapons actually work.”

If the European and American forces really want to oust Gadaffi but won’t send the fresh weapons the rebels need (especially after a nasty fire that decimated one of their stockpiles), perhaps someone could start a Kickstarter campaign to send some hardcore tinkerers or This Old House fanatics to the desert. Firepower and precision is nice, but nothing says dogged persistence – and desperation – quite like a homebrew mecha with a flamethrower for an arm.

Rebuild A Jeep In Under Four Minutes

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Badass US Army Pilot

From: http://www.flickr.com/



After delivering U.S. Soldiers and Iraq dignitaries to their final destinations, Crew Chief Sgt. Fred Oser, A. Company 2-25, Combat Aviation Brigade, attached to 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, dismounts the 240 Bravo Machine Guns from the UH-60 Black Hawk used during the morning’s mission to several Combined Security Checkpoints in the Ninewa province, Iraq, July 2.
2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division Public Affairs
Photo by Spc. Gregory Gieske
Date: 07.02.2010
Location: MOSUL, IQ

Related Photos: dvidshub.net/r/c9ivfl

M.I.A.’s New Video Too Much For YouTube

By: Edmund Mullins 

The New York Times is reporting that YouTube has pulled the video for M.I.A.’s new single, Born Free, presumably owing to nudity and graphic violence. Directed by Romain Gavras (son of filmmaker Costa-Gavras), it depicts an unidentified American military unit rounding up red-headed males from an apartment complex, then busing them to the desert where they are tortured and killed. It is hard-edged, graphic stuff and extremely NSFW.

Watch it after the jump.
497diggsdigg
Since it popped up yesterday, there’s been a lot of web chatter about the video’s political message which, at its heart, is fairly rote. I’m inclined to think the kerfluffle has a lot more to say about how dull, thoughtless and inconsequential most music videos are. A little seriousness goes a long way, and a lot, it would seem, gets people uptight. Enjoy this link while it lasts.

Ordinary T-shirts could become body armor

From: http://www.physorg.com/news189884043.html
April 7, 2010

Enlarge

SEM images showing the nanowire arrays in the T-shirt fabric, and diagram illustrating the cross-section of the carbon microfibre coated with boron carbide-nanowires. Image (c) Advanced Materials

(PhysOrg.com) -- A simple cotton T-shirt may one day be converted into tougher, more comfortable body armor for soldiers or police officers.

Researchers at the University of South Carolina, collaborating with others from China and Switzerland, drastically increased the toughness of a T-shirt by combining the carbon in the shirt’s cotton with boron - the third hardest material on earth. The result is a lightweight shirt reinforced with boron carbide, the same material used to protect tanks.

Dr. Xiaodong Li, USC College of Engineering and Computing Distinguished Professor in Mechanical Engineering, co-authored the recent article on the research in the journal, Advanced Materials.

“USC is playing a leading role in this area. This is a true breakthrough,” Li said, calling the research “a conceptual change in fabricating lightweight, fuel-efficient, super-strong and ultra-tough materials. This groundbreaking new study opens up unprecedented opportunities.”

The scientists started with plain, white T-shirts that were cut into thin strips and dipped into a boron solution. The strips were later removed from the solution and heated in an oven. The heat changes the cotton fibers intocarbon fibers, which react with the boron solution and produce boron carbide.

The result is a fabric that’s lightweight but tougher and stiffer than the original T-shirt, yet flexible enough that it can be bent, said Li, who led the group from USC. That flexibility is an improvement over the heavy boron-carbide plates used in bulletproof vests and body armor.

“The currently used boron-carbide bulk material is brittle,” Li said. “The boron-carbide nanowires we synthesized keep the same strength and stiffness of the bulk boron carbide but have super-elasticity. They are not only lightweight but also flexible. We should be able to fabricate much tougher body armors using this new technique. It could even be used to produce lightweight, fuel-efficient cars and aircrafts.”

The resulting boron-carbide fabric can also block almost all ultraviolet rays, Li said.

Provided by University of South Carolina

Chinese Soldier Grenade Throw Fail

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Voice Translator Coming to iPhone and Blackberry [VID]

BY Cliff Kuang

Witness the Real-life (Beta) Version of Star Trek's Universal Translator

Sakhr Mobile develops an iPhone app for troops and diplomats that translates Arabic speech into English, and visa versa--and there's video of it, in action.

Fast Company just got a tip about one of the first products of that effort, an iPhone and Blackberry app, created by Sakhr Software and Dial Directions, that does natural language translation. Check out the video of the app, translating sinister-sounding--but all-too-real--phrases like "The prime minister will form a new government":

This is the first product from Sakhr, which has just announced its acquisition of Dial Directions. Sakhr works on devices that scan Arabic words and then offer machine translations, and its customers already include the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Justice. Dial Directions, for its part, creates voice-entry applications.

Creating the app you see above was a matter of combining those technologies--first, the speech recognition part, which transcribes what's being said, and then applying Sakhr's know-how in translating the text that's produced. Zoinks! The future, apparently, is now. And while the military applications are obvious, we can't help but think the commercial applications are far more vast. How cool would it be to have something like this working for you while hiking in the wilds of India, or China, or any other Federation planet?

Of course, who knows how this device might fare in the field--machine language translators are faced with a daunting test, when posed with the sloppiness of real-life language. Just witness how bad Google's translation still is. The field has made tremendous strides in recent years. Will the pace continue?

Last Supper Together

army.mil — Williams feeds his 4-month-old daughter Alexandria with his wife Krystal Carde during a deployment ceremony Dec. 31 at Kieschnick Physical Fitness Center. Williams and about 450 Soldiers from the 180th deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan on Dec. 30 and 31.

original can be found here: http://www.army.mil/-images/2009/01/07/27989/

4,000 Electric Vehicles To Be Leased by US Army

by Matthew McDermott, Brooklyn, NY on 12. 1.08

photo: Native American Biofuels

Considering that many of its higher profile vehicles really suck fuel like there’s no tomorrow, you may not think that the US military concerned itself much with reducing fuel usage, but based on a recent announcement that’s apparently not the case.

According to Army Times, the Army will be deploying 800 Neighborhood Electric Vehicles next year for on-base transportation. That will be expanded to 4,000 over the next three years with “at least 10,000 vehicles overall” to be deployed eventually. So, just how much fuel will this save? Read on:

11.5 Million Gallons of Fuel Saved
According to deputy assistant Army secretary for energy and partnerships Paul Bollinger, the 4,000 35 mph electric NEVs will save some 11.5 million gallons of fuel annually. And instead of spending on average $2400 per year on fuel for the vehicles the NEV will be replacing, it will have to spend only $400 for the electricity to power the NEVs.

The electric NEVs will be supplied by E-Z-Go, Native American Biofuels International , and other unspecified sources. The first of the vehicles will be leased on an annual basis from Native American Biofuels. At some point the Army may purchase the vehicles outright. The first of the vehicles are expected to be deployed at Fort Belvoir in Virginia by December 15th of this year.

That’s Less Than a Day’s Fuel Consumption
Good on the Army for thinking about electric vehicles, but to put some perspective on the amount of fuel saved by this move consider this: The yearly savings of all these electric vehicles is less than one day’s overall fuel consumption of 340,000 barrels of oil.

via: Army Times