Powerful augmented reality technologies not only display data for users but also gather information, offering expansive capabilities.
Although X-ray vision is not necessarily possible, augmented reality is pushing the envelope of how the world can be seen. Augmented reality technologies, which traditionally use a combination of computer-generated images overlaid on a real-world view, also can scan an environment and take in data, creating 3-D virtual models of what users see.
A quantum physics-based technology developed by National Institute of Standards and Technology researchers may enable first responders, warfighters and mariners to communicate and navigate in areas where radio and satellite-based communications are limited or nonexistent. The capability would allow military and emergency personnel to stay connected in urban canyons, under rubble, inside buildings, underground or even underwater.
Mixed reality technologies, including augmented reality or virtual reality, are changing the way the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps handle system training, operations, maintenance and prototyping. Augmented reality is a combination of computer-generated images partially overlaid on a real-world view. In virtual reality, which has been around for decades, a user’s vision is obscured and totally replaced with computer-generated graphics. Both technologies visually employ degrees of computer-generated information. With the help of the Navy’s Battlespace Exploitation of Mixed Reality laboratory in San Diego, the services are looking into both types of mixed reality applications using low-cost commercial off-the-shelf technologies.
Today you can read many articles, absorb numerous interviews and watch programs about the effects of technology on business and personal life. One effect is that more people are putting a true dollar value on their time. Growing technology businesses are focused on giving people back time in their lives. New businesses have recognized that more people, especially those under 40, are willing to pay for it.
SkillMil, a new business venture spun off from the independent, nonprofit research center SRI International, aims to pair military veterans with civilian job opportunities. SkillMil uses a platform that quantifies the percentage match of a veteran’s skills and experience with current job postings. The platform also identifies the training and skills needed to achieve a 100 percent job match.
The Army wants extremely scalable, robust flat network mobile communications for its brigade combat teams. And Persistent Networks has the answer. The company successfully demonstrated that its MPU5 smart radio could scale up to an extraordinary 320-node mobile ad hoc network (MANET) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) has agreed to allow Aurora Flight Sciences to transition its X-Plane program technology to commercial applications, including expanding its research into commercial electronic vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) systems, the company has announced.
The Canadian Department of National Defence is funding researchers at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, C$2.7 million to develop a new type of radar that can operate effectively in harsh Arctic conditions using quantum light. The new technology also would be able to unmask stealth aircraft, according to university scientists.
From an industry perspective there are many advantages to moving aspects of any organization to the cloud. In theory, cloud is more efficient and easier to manage, but organizations like the Defense Department need to make sure they are not bringing along their bad habits and old baggage with them. Legacy networks are hard to understand and have grown out of control in the last few decades. Cloud is as complex as legacy networks, but the difference is who or what is really maintaining them.
People worldwide are buzzing about digital currencies such as bitcoin and Ethereum. Blockchain is the technology that forms the backbone of some of these new currencies being marketed today.
Blockchain creates a digital decentralized ledger that records all transactions. There is no central point of ownership for the information on the ledger, and the information is transferred among disparate parties. Each time the ledger is updated or verified, a time stamp is assigned and linked back to the previous record. The result is an unchangeable chain of information consisting of blocks—hence the term blockchain.
The competitive strengths of the past cannot be counted on in a digital, cloud-based environment, making access to real-time data a critical requirement for success. A company must not only be agile, but also be able to leverage a highly automated infrastructure and incorporate real-time data analytics when making business decisions. As a result, organizations are increasingly pulling away from traditional data centers in favor of architectures that are more automated, software-defined and flexible, according to a recent study by International Data Corporation (IDC).
The rapid increase in the use of unmanned vehicles has created a demand for the U.S. Navy to find talented drone operators. Typically, the Navy has assigned aviators to operate drones, but this has taken away from their traditional aviation assignments, according to an article from Warren Duffie of Office of Naval Research (ONR) Corporate Strategic Communications.
The Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency has begun a program to address an emerging conflict in a nebulous area between peace and conventional warfare. Dubbed the “gray zone,” actions in this space occur slower and are executed more subtly using social, psychological, religious, informational, cyber and other means to achieve physical or cognitive objectives with or without violence.
The U.S. Army is overhauling its relationship with technology providers to incorporate a new class of capabilities that will enable survivable, protected, intuitive, standards-based, interoperable, sustainable and, above all, highly mobile networks. To obtain these types of technologies, the service plans to assume a position where it is articulating its intent, a process that’s being described as “adapt and buy.”
Native plant life could join traffic cameras, motion detectors and enemy sensor systems as future sources of battlefield information if the U.S. Army Research Laboratory has its way. The laboratory is applying the Internet of Things approach to theater command, control, communications, computers and intelligence as it plans to equip soldiers and their leaders with vital knowledge from nontraditional information sources, and it is leaving no stone—or crop—unturned in its efforts.
The U.S. Navy’s first-of-its kind high-energy laser weapon contract will supply one 60-150 kilowatt system for an Arleigh-Burke class ship, the DDG 51 Flight IIA, and another as a land-based test unit. The award of the $150 million contract, to Lockheed Martin Corp. in late January, signals the move of laser weaponry from science and technology research to fielding and use on Naval ships. In a highly competitive field against three other companies bidding on the contract, Lockheed Martin was not able to discuss the award until now.
The Department of Defense Joint Enterprise Standards Committee today has listed the Software Communications Architecture (SCA) version 4.1 as a mandated tactical radio standard in the department’s Information Technology Standards Registry (DISR) and retired SCA version 2.2.2.
The SCA is an open architecture framework that defines a standard way to instantiate, configure and manage waveform applications running on a radio hardware platform. The SCA decouples waveform software from its platform-specific software and hardware, facilitates waveform software reuse and minimizes development expenditures.
The combination of so-called additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing, electromagnetic simulation and mechanical design software is enabling innovative antenna and radio-frequency components. Engineers are harnessing these tools to design, fabricate, test and manufacture lightweight, highly complex antennas and radio-frequency products.
Melding materials three-dimensionally into state-of-the-art antennas would not be possible without key software platforms. For this, antenna producer Optisys relies on technology from ANSYS Incorporated. Started in 1970 as a small company in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, ANSYS now has 75 offices in 40 countries. As a multiphysics business, ANSYS looks at all aspects of physics design—structural, thermal, fluid dynamics and electronics.
The U.S. government is likely the largest combined producer and consumer of software in the world. The code to build that software is volatile, expensive and oftentimes completely hidden from view. Most people only see the end result: the compiled and packaged application or website. However, a massive worldwide community, the Open Source Initiative, centers on the exact opposite.
