Lifeboat Foundation

Yikes.

A ROBOT designed by NASA for search and rescue missions was caught on camera as it burst into flames in a blast “as powerful as a stick of dynamite”.

Some predictions for 2045, from the Pentagon.

We have already seen the HoloLens mixed reality headset put to military use by the Israeli Defense Force for advanced battlefield planning.

Now Ukrainian company LimpidArmor has shown off a new application for the augmented reality device on the actual battlefield to improve the field of view of tank commanders without exposing them to additional risk. The technology was shown off at the Arms and Security show, held in Kiev from 11 to 14 October.

LimpidArmor’s hardware and software system uses a HoloLens integrated with a helmet and cameras mounted around the tank to give commanders a 360 degree view of their environment in both optical and thermal and makes this available in real-time.

Continue reading “HoloLens gets more battlefield use” »

In Brief:

• Now with just under $800 million in funding, Florida startup Magic Leap has applied for a patent for its VR/AR headsets, bringing them one step closer to market.
• From healthcare to the military, VR/AR is being applied to industries far beyond its humble roots in gaming.

Florida-based startup Magic Leap has been getting considerable attention thanks in no small part to the awesome-looking augmented reality video demos it has released. Apart from these videos and the info we could glean from some interviews and Twitter posts, however, we haven’t yet been given a complete explanation of what the company has in store for consumers. What we do know is that it promises an AR experience unlike any other by delivering “neurologically true visual perception.” In short, the brain won’t be able to tell the difference between reality and virtual reality when you are using Magic Leap’s device.

Continue reading “Get Ready for Magic Leap: New Patent Brings VR Device One Step Closer to Reality” »

With pinpoint accuracy, this electronic warfare drone can black out opposing forces at will.

Boeing’s “CHAMP” (Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project) is a one-missile, flying blackout. Image source: Boeing.

A secret, hypersonic replacement for the legendary SR-71 promises to transform military aviation.

Elon Musk is obsessed with space. At age 30, he founded SpaceX. At age 41, he oversaw the first cargo mission to the International Space Station by a private company. And at age 12, as a kid living in South Africa, he made a space-themed PC game called Blastar. Now, thanks to the power of the internet, you can play that game.

Musk sold the code for Blastar for $500 to the magazine PC and Office Technology, and a reproduction of the page it appeared on was published in Ashlee Vance’s biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. From there, Tomas Lloret Llinares — a software engineer at Google — took the code and rebuilt the game to work in HTML5.

Your mission, as the game’s lonely space pilot, is to “destroy [the] alien freighter carrying deadly hydrogen bombs and status beam machines.” Blastar is mostly a mix of Space Invaders and Asteroid, though it’s much more basic. There is never more than two ships on the screen, there are few sound effects, and — like many games of its time — it really has no ending. It’s almost unimpressive; that is, until you remember that it was made by a 12-year-old in 1984.

Continue reading “Play the PC game Elon Musk wrote as a pre-teen” »

Hmmm.

The United States has put artificial intelligence at the center of its defense strategy, with weapons that can identify targets and make decisions.

Russia has unveiled chilling pictures of its largest ever nuclear missile, capable of destroying an area the size of France.

The RS-28 Sarmat missile, dubbed Satan 2 by Nato, has a top speed of 4.3 miles (7km) per second and has been designed to outfox anti-missile shield systems.

Continue reading “Russia unveils first images of Satan 2 missile” »