Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Creating and Preventing Strategic Surprise

DARPA Collaboration Offers Hope to People with Tetraplegia

Revolutionizing Prosthetics News Release 72

DARPA launched the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program in 2006 to advance the state of upper-limb prosthetic technology with the goals of improving quality of life for service-disabled veterans and ultimately giving them the option of returning to duty. Since then, Revolutionizing Prosthetics teams have developed two anthropomorphic advanced modular prototype prosthetic arm systems, including sockets, which offer increased range of motion, dexterity and control options. Through DARPA-funded work and partnerships with external researchers, the arm systems and supporting technology continue to advance. News Release Program Page

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Throughout history technical challenges have inspired generations...

Revolutionary Approach for Controlling Sepsis Key to Saving Warfighter Lives

Sepsis is an overwhelming blood infection, which when coupled with shock (such as that which may be experienced following a combat injury) has a mortality rate near 50 percent. Current methods to identify and treat sepsis may take 48 hours or longer – resulting in increased recovery time from combat wounds and hundreds of preventable deaths. News Release Program Page

Can automated deep natural-language analysis unlock the power of inference?

Much of the operationally-relevant information relied on in support of DoD missions may be implicit rather than explicitly expressed, and in many cases, information is deliberately obfuscated and important activities and objects are only indirectly referenced. News Release

DARPA SEEKS TECHNOLOGY TO SEE THROUGH CLOUDS FOR WARFIGHTER SUPPORT

Warfighters who encounter enemy forces on the ground benefit from overhead aircraft support. Some capabilities are lost, however, when cloud-cover obscures the view. Typically, airborne weapon systems that use electro-optic (EO) sensors during support missions can’t “see” through clouds. DARPA’s Video Synthetic Aperture Radar (ViSAR) program seeks to develop and demonstrate an Extremely High Frequency (EHF) targeting sensor which operates through clouds as effectively as today’s infrared (IR) sensors operate in clear weather. News Release

Energy ≠ Heat: DARPA seeks non-thermal approaches to thin-film deposition

When the Department of Defense (DoD) wants to build a jet, it doesn’t put a team of engineers in a hangar with a block of metal and some chisels. A jet is made up of thousands of individual components that come from all over and are carefully assembled into a finished product that possesses the desired performance capabilities. In the case of thin-film deposition—a process in which coatings with special properties are bonded to materials and parts to enhance performance—current science addresses the process as though it is attempting to build a jet from a block of metal, focusing on the whole and ignoring the parts. Like a jet, the thin-film deposition process could work better if it was addressed at the component level. News Release

DARPA OPENS INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUE ON SATELLITE SERVICING

Current satellites are not designed to be serviced in space. When a communication satellite in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) fails 36,000 kilometers above the earth, typically, it is moved into a “graveyard” orbit where it remains indefinitely. Many of the satellites which are obsolete or have failed still have usable antennas, solar arrays and other components which are expected to last much longer than the life of the satellite, but currently there is no way to re-use them. News Release