Search Results for: "Massachusetts+Institute+of+Technology"
Space Technology Forecast Released By The Military Space Transparency Project
Relevance Score: 4.970 2010-01-27 18:48:41
The Cambridge based Military Space Transparency Project (MSTP) has released their military space technology forecast for public viewing. This timely forecast highlights future dual use and emerging technologies out to the year 2025. The mission of the Military Space Transparency Project (MSTP) is to reveal the efforts, policies and innovations that will reach the crucial stage in the research, development and deployment of space warfare solutions. MSTP not only focuses public attention on dedicated military space technologies with warfare applications, but also focuses on uncovering the dual-use and emerging technologies that will lead to the weaponization of space. Through its research and reporting, MSTP aims to support international dialogue and the resulting development of international treaty regimes that would address these dual-use and emerging technologies before they are able to undermine peaceful international space collaborations and ultimately our national security. Matthew Hoey founded the Military Space Transparency Project (MSTP), based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hoey is a former senior research associate at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS), a United Nations Non-Governmental research organization located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he forecasted missile defense and military space technologies. At IDDS Hoey worked under the guidance of renowned arms control expert Dr. Randall Forsberg. Hoey also served IDDS as a contributing editor to the Arms Control Reporter, for which he wrote on missile defense, military space systems and dual-use technologies. Hoey’s research has been featured by the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy Magazine, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Cryptome, The Space Review, The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), The Center for Defense Information (CDI) and the WEU Interparlimentary European Security and Defense Assembly among others. Hoey has also lectured at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at the MIT Science, Technology and Global Security Working Group. Hoey’s current research is focused on the impact of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, directed energy and nanotechnology on military and commercial space systems.
NASA Shows a One-Man Stealth Plane: Electric Icarus
Relevance Score: 3.375 2010-02-03 22:42:22
Could the Puffin, an electric-powered flying suit, change the way we use the sky in war and peace? A super-quiet, hover-capable aircraft design, NASA's experimental one-man Puffin could show just how much electric propulsion can transform our ideas of flight. It looks like nothing less than a flying suit or a jet pack with a cockpit. On the ground, the Puffin is designed to stand on its tail, which splits into four legs to help serve as landing gear. As a pilot prepares to take off, flaps on the wings would tilt to deflect air from the 2.3-meter-wide propeller rotors upward, keeping the plane on the ground until it was ready to fly and preventing errant gusts from tipping it over. The Puffin would rise, hover and then lean over to fly horizontally, with the pilot lying prone as if in a glider. When landing, the extending spring legs would support the 3.7-meter-long, 4.1-meter-wingspan craft, which is designed with carbon-fiber composites to weigh in at 135 kilograms, not including 45 kilograms of rechargeable lithium phosphate batteries. In principle, the Puffin can cruise at 240 kilometers per hour and dash at more than 480 kph. It has no flight ceiling—it is not air-breathing like gas engines are, and thus is not limited by thin air—so it could go up to about 9,150 meters before its energy runs low enough to drive it to descend. With current state-of-the-art batteries, it has a range of just 80 kilometers if cruising, "but many researchers are proposing a tripling of current battery energy densities in the next five to seven years, so we could see a range of 240 to 320 kilometers by 2017," informs researcher Mark Moore, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. He and his colleagues will officially show the Puffin design on January 20 at an American Helicopter Society meeting in San Francisco. Moore and his colleagues at NASA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the National Institute of Aerospace, and M-DOT Aerospace named their craft the Puffin because "if you've ever seen a puffin on the ground, it looks very awkward, with wings too small to fly, and that's exactly what our vehicle looks like," he explains. "But it's also apparently called the most environmentally friendly bird, because it hides its poop, and we're environmentally friendly because we have essentially no emissions. Also, puffins tend to live in solitude, only ever coming together on land to mate, and ours is a one-person vehicle." This design relies on electric motors. These remain efficient regardless of their size, whereas internal combustion engines become less efficient the smaller they are. As such, electric aircraft can use small motors while generating impressive propulsion—the Puffin can lift a person with just 60 horsepower.
Triton Systems Opening Office In North Dakota
Relevance Score: 3.010 2010-03-04 17:03:40
A company is opening a facility in the North Dakota State University Research and Technology Park to develop biodefense materials that will be used for military clothing and shelters. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., informs NDSU is getting $3.6 million from the federal government to work with Triton Systems on development of the materials. Triton Systems and its affiliates have sites in Massachusetts, California and Switzerland.
Top 100 US Defense Contractors
Relevance Score: 2.954 2009-07-08 23:16:05
1. Lockheed Martin Corp. 2. Boeing Co. 3. Northrop Grumman Corp. 4. General Dynamics Corp. 5. Raytheon Co. 6. KBR Inc. 7. L-3 Communications Holdings 8. United Technologies Corp. 9. BAE Systems 10. SAIC 11. General Electric Co. 12. Computer Sciences Corp. 13. Humana Inc. 14. Health Net Inc. 15. Triwest Healthcare Alliance Co. 16. EDS 17. Public Warehousing Co. KSC 18. ITT Industries 19. Textron Inc. 20. Honeywell Inc. 21. URS Corp. 22. Harris Corp. 23. AmerisourceBergen Corp. 24. Bechtel Group Inc. 25. FedEx Corp. 26. Alliant Techsystems Inc. 27. Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. 28. BP PLC 29. DRS Technologies Inc. 30. Exxon Mobil Corp. 31. Kuwait National Petroleum Co. 32. The Alliance Contractor Team 33. Renco Corp. 34. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings 35. Environmental Chemical Corp. 36. Oshkosh Truck Corp. 37. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. 38. Stewart & Stevenson Services 39. Armor Holdings Inc. 40. General Motors Corp. 41. Grindex Pumps A B Sweden 42. Korea Agricultural Cooperative 43. CACI International Inc. 44. Johns Hopkins University 45. General Atomics Technology Corp. 46. Rockwell Collins 47. McKesson Corp. 48. Valero Energy Corp. 49. Aerospace Corp. 50. MITRE Corp. 51. Cardinal Health Inc. 52. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 53. Syracuse Research Corp. 54. Chugach Alaska Corp. 55. Dell Computer Corp. 56. Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. 57. ARINC Inc. 58. Phillips and Jordan Inc. 59. Refinery Associates Inc. 60. Rolls-Royce PLC 61. United Industrial Corp. 62. IAP Worldwide Services Inc. 63. Government of Canada 64. Hatakeyama Bussan 65. AP Moller-Maersk 66. ChevronTexaco Corp. 67. Battelle Memorial Institute 68. Shaw Group Inc. 69. Parsons Corp. 70. Thales Group 71. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. 72. Bahrain National Oil Co. 73. Philip Morris Co. 74. Tetra Tech Inc. 75. Chenega Corp. 76. AshBritt Inc. 77. Hunt Building Corp. 78. Ceradyne Inc. 79. Ceres Environmental Services 80. SK Corp. 81. Veritas Capital Inc. 82. CH2M Hill Companies Ltd. 83. Aecom Technology Corp. 84. Washington Group International 85. Goodrich Corp. 86. Hensel Phelps Construction Co. 87. Procter & Gamble Co. 88. Tesoro Petroleum Corp. 89. UBS Provedores 90. Dogog Farm 91. Datapath Inc. 92. Mantech International Corp. 93. Afognak Native Corp. 94. VSE Corp. 95. Accenture 96. IBM Corp. 97. Arctic Slope Regional Corp. 98. Serco Group PLC 99. Kemyong Farm Ltd. 100. Charles Stark Draper Labs
Robot Pack Mule to Carry Loads for G.I.s on the Move
Relevance Score: 2.718 2010-02-10 17:23:35
Within the next three years, the U.S. military will test the feasibility of sending a quadruped robot out into the field as a trusty pack mule to carry supplies for its troops, wherever they go. If the testing goes well for Boston Dynamics's Legged Squad Support System (LS3), company founder Marc Raibert will have come a long way from the one-legged hopping robots he pioneered in the 1980s. Actually Raibert has already come a long way, to the point where the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Tactical Technology Office and the U.S. Marine Corps awarded his company a 30-month, $32-million contract last week to deliver a prototype LS3. This would be the first step in fulfilling the military's call for an autonomous, legged robot that can carry up to 181 kilograms of supplies for at least 32 kilometers without refueling. The LS3 is the latest in a series of legged robots developed by Raibert, who got his start in 1980, when he founded a robotics workshop at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh called the Leg Laboratory. Raibert moved the Leg Lab to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986 after becoming a professor of electrical engineering and computer science there. The lab, which he directed until 1995, did good work, he says, "but it always felt like we were kicking the can down the street, making scientific progress, but not worrying about a system that could operate out in the real world." Boston Dynamics, which Raibert founded in 1992, scored a breakthrough in 2003 when DARPA began funding the development of BigDog, a 75-kilogram mechanical workhorse and the LS3's predecessor. BigDog did not use cameras or laser sensors to determine its location. Instead, it stepped first and then reacted to the terrain, quickly determining its position at any given time and comparing that with its desired position, immediately taking corrective action based on the difference between these two.
Comtech Telecommunications Corp. Announces Successful FIPS 140-2 Certification Related to Its BFT-2 Network Initiative
Relevance Score: 2.712 2010-01-14 11:27:22
Comtech Telecommunications Corp. (Nasdaq:CMTL) announced today that its Maryland-based subsidiary, Comtech Mobile Datacom Corporation (CMDC), received a FIPS 140-2 Validation Certification from the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) for its satellite network's cryptographic library modules which are incorporated into Comtech's Blue Force Tracking-2 (BFT-2) Network initiative. The FIPS 140-2 validation for cryptographic modules is obtained through the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the United States FIPS 140-2 Cryptographic Module Validation Authority, as well as the Communications Security Establishment, Canada's FIPS 140-2 Cryptographic Module Validation Authority.
KaZaK To Support Boeing UAV Weapons Demo
Relevance Score: 2.477 2010-03-27 14:09:30
U.S. company Boeing selected KaZaK Composites Inc. to deliver its airframe technologies supporting an unmanned airborne vehicle weapons program. Composite engineering provider KaZaK, which has headquarters in Massachusetts, will deliver Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems unit with its airframe solution for a UAV weapons demonstration program. Boeing is working under the first phase of the UAV weapons program. KaZaK's airframe will deliver electrical and other components with housing for the miniature weapon technology under development. "The initial aspects of the design were developed under an small business innovative research contract," Steve Schoenholtz, KaZaK senior mechanical engineer working on the project, informed in a statement. "With modifications to the original design we can enable our advanced technology to meet the warfighters' needs in a variety of targets and also generate very low collateral damage."
Building the "Always On" Global Enterprise Network
Relevance Score: 2.272 2009-08-04 11:58:23
data framework. We have a group of folks with previous experience modifying Navy logistics data policies that we have integrated into the Army to assist us with the standardization of the data framework. Finally, we have another group working on data maturity, with a nationally recognized data maturity expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is assisting with our data analyses. We’ve combined these various groups into a single organization under the direction of our data czar, and they are now working on a number of use cases to improve how data is accessible, available and standardized within the department. The first use case is something we’ve been doing for the Army vice chief of staff on suicide prevention. We’re trying to work with data from a number of different sources—G-1, the Surgeon General, and Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine [CHPPM]—to make data accessible to all organizations. Each of the staff elements has different databases, and no one is able to see all the data or look at it the same way. This is similar to 9/11, where the FBI, CIA and other organizations couldn’t share the data in their respective databases nor could everyone look at the data the same way. So we’re working now with all these staff organizations to expose their respective databases so that everyone can see each other’s data and eliminate the need for independent databases. We’ve established the suicide prevention use case among a number of other use cases to get at improving our data strategy, including an effort we have at the headquarters to provide better data visibility for the Army secretary and chief regarding unit status, readiness and so forth. At the same time, we’re working with Forces Command in Atlanta and TRADOC, trying to standardize use and make their organizational databases visible and accessible to those who require the data. We’re not there yet, but through some of these use cases we can demonstrate what our data czar group can do. Over time, we’re going to get away from everyone with their own Excel spreadsheets and separate databases, and get to the point where data is accessible and available to those who need to use it Q: What are you working on in the area of Army IT governance? A: The governance piece is all about ensuring that we operate effectively the same way, and that we operate in a way everyone understands what the configuration should be. We’ve redesigned our governance structure to set up two boards, in a manner similar to DoD. We have an Engineering Review Board, which looks at the technical aspects of our network, and an Operations Review Board, which looks at how we support the warfighter and what we need to do differently to effect those changes. Part of governance is also trying to standardize our procurement policies. We have recently spent some time emphasizing the four tenets of GNEC: operationalize the network, improve the security of the network, find efficiencies and effectiveness to afford the network, and make it joint. When you look at those four aspects, the one that clearly is the linchpin is efficiency and effectiveness. We’re working with the program manager for CHESS [Computer Hardware, Enterprise Software and Solutions] to standardize some of our procurement procedures, because we’ve found that in many cases people go out and buy IT when they want to, but the system they procured does not have the right standard or configuration. Part of this governance activity is to standardize procurement policies and processes, so that not only do we get the right configuration onto the network, we also save money by buying our systems with enterprise purchases.
Building the "Always On" Global Enterprise Network
Relevance Score: 2.258 2009-08-04 11:58:23
data framework. We have a group of folks with previous experience modifying Navy logistics data policies that we have integrated into the Army to assist us with the standardization of the data framework. Finally, we have another group working on data maturity, with a nationally recognized data maturity expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is assisting with our data analyses. We’ve combined these various groups into a single organization under the direction of our data czar, and they are now working on a number of use cases to improve how data is accessible, available and standardized within the department. The first use case is something we’ve been doing for the Army vice chief of staff on suicide prevention. We’re trying to work with data from a number of different sources—G-1, the Surgeon General, and Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine [CHPPM]—to make data accessible to all organizations. Each of the staff elements has different databases, and no one is able to see all the data or look at it the same way. This is similar to 9/11, where the FBI, CIA and other organizations couldn’t share the data in their respective databases nor could everyone look at the data the same way. So we’re working now with all these staff organizations to expose their respective databases so that everyone can see each other’s data and eliminate the need for independent databases. We’ve established the suicide prevention use case among a number of other use cases to get at improving our data strategy, including an effort we have at the headquarters to provide better data visibility for the Army secretary and chief regarding unit status, readiness and so forth. At the same time, we’re working with Forces Command in Atlanta and TRADOC, trying to standardize use and make their organizational databases visible and accessible to those who require the data. We’re not there yet, but through some of these use cases we can demonstrate what our data czar group can do. Over time, we’re going to get away from everyone with their own Excel spreadsheets and separate databases, and get to the point where data is accessible and available to those who need to use it Q: What are you working on in the area of Army IT governance? A: The governance piece is all about ensuring that we operate effectively the same way, and that we operate in a way everyone understands what the configuration should be. We’ve redesigned our governance structure to set up two boards, in a manner similar to DoD. We have an Engineering Review Board, which looks at the technical aspects of our network, and an Operations Review Board, which looks at how we support the warfighter and what we need to do differently to effect those changes. Part of governance is also trying to standardize our procurement policies. We have recently spent some time emphasizing the four tenets of GNEC: operationalize the network, improve the security of the network, find efficiencies and effectiveness to afford the network, and make it joint. When you look at those four aspects, the one that clearly is the linchpin is efficiency and effectiveness. We’re working with the program manager for CHESS [Computer Hardware, Enterprise Software and Solutions] to standardize some of our procurement procedures, because we’ve found that in many cases people go out and buy IT when they want to, but the system they procured does not have the right standard or configuration. Part of this governance activity is to standardize procurement policies and processes, so that not only do we get the right configuration onto the network, we also save money by buying our systems with enterprise purchases.
Scientists Use Virtual World to Support Troops
Relevance Score: 1.830 2009-08-04 12:16:57
Scientists are using virtual online worlds to improve the flow of information and support to servicemembers returning from deployments. Jacquelyn Morie of the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies discussed the “Transitional Online Post-deployment Soldier Support in Virtual Worlds” project during a July 29 webcast of “Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military” on Pentagon Web radio. Also known as “Coming Home,” the project will create a space within Second Life -- a 3-D online virtual community -- dedicated to providing camaraderie, support and resources for returning soldiers trying to reintegrate into civilian life. “Second Life is unique because it allows users to build things and own the things they build,” Morie said. “It has a huge range; whatever people can imagine and dream, they can build there. You’re represented by a 3-D avatar, so you can represent yourself however you feel is appropriate for who you are.” The project incorporates immersive games, virtual world expertise and virtual human intelligence. Coming Home will be populated with artificial, intelligence-driven virtual characters that can aid veterans in finding support and therapies. “You can think of it as the VFW hall of the 21st century,” Morie explained. “Most veterans, when they come back, are not collocated into neighborhoods the way people were in World War II. So this gives people a chance to be together, even if they’re widely dispersed.” Morie’s research team also is developing an online veterans center that focuses on social activities and complementary and alternative medical interventions that can help prevent stress and post-traumatic stress disorder. “We’re working with the Mindfulness Center in San Diego, and they’ll be running classes in Second Life in our land with veterans,” Morie said. “We’ll see how the veterans respond to that and how the facilitators work.” Morie said that the center also will create artificial, intelligence-based avatars that will populate Second Life’s veterans’ center. The institute is widely known for its research on “virtual humans,” realistic, online characters that can converse, understand, reason, and even exhibit emotions. These virtual humans will provide services for users that otherwise might require a real person to be logged into Second Life and available at all times. “We have virtual humans you can negotiate with, we have virtual humans that serve as patients to therapists in training, and we have virtual humans with emotional models that can be very defensive,” Morie said. “Part of the research in the veterans’ center is to take those virtual humans -- their intelligence -- and put them into avatars that can be helpers in the virtual space.” Much of what the institute does in its work is to merge cutting-edge technology with social and psychological study. The institute’s artificial intelligence “agents” are being developed for use in the Army as coaches or teachers in a classroom setting, Morie said, as well as in the Second Life environment. “If we can supplement [simulation or real-life exercises] with continued training within a virtual space, we’re offering something of a lot more value,” Morie said. In the end, the institute’s goal in Second Life is to create an environment for veterans to network and find information and assistance when dealing with the stresses of returning from deployment, she said.