Rapidly flapping wings to hover, dive, climb, or dart through an open doorway, DARPA’s remotely controlled Nano Air Vehicle relays real-time video from a tiny on-board camera back to its operator. Weighing less than a AA battery and resembling a live hummingbird, the vehicle could give war fighters an unobtrusive view of threats inside or outside a building from a safe distance. This week, TIME Magazine named the Hummingbird one of the best 50 inventions of the year, featuring it on the November 28th cover.
Credit: DARPA
“The Hummingbird’s development is in keeping with a long DARPA tradition of innovation and technical advances for national defense that support the agency’s singular mission – to prevent and create strategic surprise,” said Jay Schnitzer, director, Defense Sciences Office.
Credit: DARPA
Creating a robotic hummingbird, complete with intricate wings and video capability, may not have seemed doable or even imaginable to some. But it was this same DARPA visionary innovation that decades ago led to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which were, at the time, inconceivable to some because there was no pilot on board. In the past two years, the Air Force has trained more initial qualification pilots to fly UAVs than fighters and bombers combined.
“Advances at DARPA challenge existing perspectives as they progress from seemingly impossible through improbable to inevitable,” said, DARPA Director Dr. Regina Dugan.
UAVs from the small WASP, to the Predator, to Global Hawk now number in the hundreds in Afghanistan. What once seemed inconceivable is now routine.
Advanced 3-D mission planning technology makes TIME’s 2011 50 best inventions list
“At DARPA today we have many examples of people – national treasures themselves – who left lucrative careers, and PhD programs, to join the fight,” Dugan said. “Technically astute, inspiringly articulate, full of ‘fire in the belly,’ they are hell-bent and unrelenting in their efforts to show the world what’s possible. And they do it in service to our Nation.”
TIME Magazine also recognized DARPA’s innovative breakthrough in 3-D holography, the Urban Photonic Sandtable Display, among its top 50 inventions. The holographic sand table could give war fighters a virtual mission planning tool by enabling color 3-D scene depictions, viewable by 20 people from any direction—with no 3-D glasses required.
Credit: DARPA
“The Hummingbird’s development is in keeping with a long DARPA tradition of innovation and technical advances for national defense that support the agency’s singular mission – to prevent and create strategic surprise,” said Jay Schnitzer, director, Defense Sciences Office.
Creating a robotic hummingbird, complete with intricate wings and video capability, may not have seemed doable or even imaginable to some. But it was this same DARPA visionary innovation that decades ago led to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which were, at the time, inconceivable to some because there was no pilot on board. In the past two years, the Air Force has trained more initial qualification pilots to fly UAVs than fighters and bombers combined.
“Advances at DARPA challenge existing perspectives as they progress from seemingly impossible through improbable to inevitable,” said, DARPA Director Dr. Regina Dugan.
UAVs from the small WASP, to the Predator, to Global Hawk now number in the hundreds in Afghanistan. What once seemed inconceivable is now routine.
Advanced 3-D mission planning technology makes TIME’s 2011 50 best inventions list
“At DARPA today we have many examples of people – national treasures themselves – who left lucrative careers, and PhD programs, to join the fight,” Dugan said. “Technically astute, inspiringly articulate, full of ‘fire in the belly,’ they are hell-bent and unrelenting in their efforts to show the world what’s possible. And they do it in service to our Nation.”
TIME Magazine also recognized DARPA’s innovative breakthrough in 3-D holography, the Urban Photonic Sandtable Display, among its top 50 inventions. The holographic sand table could give war fighters a virtual mission planning tool by enabling color 3-D scene depictions, viewable by 20 people from any direction—with no 3-D glasses required.
Credit: DARPA
Military teams have gathered around mission planning sand tables for centuries, but in the future they may have a more realistic and interactive simulation tool. DARPA’s Urban Photonic Sandtable Display (UPSD) pioneers an advanced 3-D technology that creates a real-time, color, 360-degree, 3-D holographic display that could assist battle planners. TIME Magazine honored the UPSD and DARPA’s Nano Air Vehicle Hummingbird, a robotic air vehicle that looks and flies like a Hummingbird, as two of the best 50 inventions of the year.
"The ability to dynamically display three dimensional data and video to an audience gathered around a sandtable – without the need for special glasses or equipment – represents a significant step forward in our ability to more naturally synthesize and interact with a virtual world in an intuitive way,” said Don Woodbury, director, Strategic Technology Office. “With UPSD, DARPA has opened the door to a new approach to training, mission planning and data visualization.”
A team of up to 20 planners can view the UPSD’s large-format, interactive 3-D display. It’s an example of DARPA’s commitment to advancing technology to support the war fighter. Adding fidelity and real-time 3-D terrain data is expected to enhance mission planning.
“This recognition for military technical innovation is a credit to the quintessential DARPA program manager,” said DARPA Director, Dr. Regina Dugan. “They are technical visionaries, best-in-class scientists and engineers, who are determined to make a difference for our warfighters. They come from diverse backgrounds in academia, industry, laboratories, non-profits; they come to DARPA to serve their country.”
UPSD demonstrates a unique technology which enables each 3-D holographic object to project the correct amount of light that the original object possessed in each direction, for full 360-degree viewing.
The holographic sand table technology is part of DARPA’s broader efforts in 3-D technology research, such as wide-area, 3-D LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) mapping under DARPA’s High Altitude LIDAR Operations Experiment (HALOE). Through HALOE, forces in Afghanistan are receiving unprecedented access to high-resolution 3-D data. UPSD’s display can support the rapid exploitation of this data for detailed mission planning in diverse terrains: rugged, mountainous, or complex urban terrains.
Contacts and sources:
Military teams have gathered around mission planning sand tables for centuries, but in the future they may have a more realistic and interactive simulation tool. DARPA’s Urban Photonic Sandtable Display (UPSD) pioneers an advanced 3-D technology that creates a real-time, color, 360-degree, 3-D holographic display that could assist battle planners. TIME Magazine honored the UPSD and DARPA’s Nano Air Vehicle Hummingbird, a robotic air vehicle that looks and flies like a Hummingbird, as two of the best 50 inventions of the year.
"The ability to dynamically display three dimensional data and video to an audience gathered around a sandtable – without the need for special glasses or equipment – represents a significant step forward in our ability to more naturally synthesize and interact with a virtual world in an intuitive way,” said Don Woodbury, director, Strategic Technology Office. “With UPSD, DARPA has opened the door to a new approach to training, mission planning and data visualization.”
A team of up to 20 planners can view the UPSD’s large-format, interactive 3-D display. It’s an example of DARPA’s commitment to advancing technology to support the war fighter. Adding fidelity and real-time 3-D terrain data is expected to enhance mission planning.
“This recognition for military technical innovation is a credit to the quintessential DARPA program manager,” said DARPA Director, Dr. Regina Dugan. “They are technical visionaries, best-in-class scientists and engineers, who are determined to make a difference for our warfighters. They come from diverse backgrounds in academia, industry, laboratories, non-profits; they come to DARPA to serve their country.”
UPSD demonstrates a unique technology which enables each 3-D holographic object to project the correct amount of light that the original object possessed in each direction, for full 360-degree viewing.
The holographic sand table technology is part of DARPA’s broader efforts in 3-D technology research, such as wide-area, 3-D LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) mapping under DARPA’s High Altitude LIDAR Operations Experiment (HALOE). Through HALOE, forces in Afghanistan are receiving unprecedented access to high-resolution 3-D data. UPSD’s display can support the rapid exploitation of this data for detailed mission planning in diverse terrains: rugged, mountainous, or complex urban terrains.
Contacts and sources:
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