Backed by a US Army grant of $50 million over five years, MIT has launched a new Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. The institute is tasked with innovating materials and designs that will reinvent soldiers' uniforms, turning them into high tech gear that rivals the best science fiction.
Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a lightweight space age generator that can generate 25 watts and keep going for a week. The generator will enable future soldiers and police officers to carry laser weapons and sophisticated computer, navigation, and imaging equipment.
Researchers hope to use advances in computers, communications and neuroscience to medically enhance the mental acuity of future soldiers, while connecting their body and minds to smarter machines.
A giant leap for mankind may have begun with one small flip of a robotic fish. The fish is the first robot to be powered by real muscles and American military chiefs believe that the same technology could be harnessed to enable soldiers to leap tall buildings.
The US military is planning to turn soldiers into supermen by fitting them with powered skeletons. The research arm of the US military is spending $50m to develop new technologies that will improve the speed, strength and endurance of soldiers.
The United States wants its own starship troopers. As part of a project that's been quietly ticking away for months now, the Department of Defense has decided it needs to grant superhuman powers to its soldiers; providing them with the ability run faster, carry more gear and leap tall buildings. It plans to do this with powered combat armour exoskeletons, and the first contract in the project was awarded this week.
Humans merging with robots and other technologies is "inevitable," says robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks. However, a lot of work still needs to be done, and the toughest task may be making humans comfortable with becoming something other than human.
It is designed to make the 21st century U.S. soldier a more effective instrument of war, a veritable cyborg able to communicate with more speed and efficiency. Since early June, 44 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division have been experimenting with a prototype system the Army calls the "Land Warrior." Its video cameras allow soldiers to scan terrain ahead without being exposed, even call for medical help with the aid of a message system.
Greater reliance on robotics and advanced networking will revolutionize warfare within 15 years, according to a top military official who forecasts future trends in warfare and technology. Robotic vehicles and manned vehicles will work together, linked by digital networks, predicted Frank Fernandez, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's central research and development organization.
THE advent of 'cyborgs' has been brought a step closer by the creation of a strange hybrid creature with a mechanical body controlled by the brain of a fish. As ghoulish as this chimera sounds, it may one day allow people to be fitted with prosthetic devices that are controlled directly by their brain.