Google teaches robots to learn from each other using a hive mind
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Robots learning from other robots will ultimately mean robots will learn new skills faster, accelerating the robot revolution. The robots of the world are uniting – and that’s either a great thing or a terrifying thing depending on your view. Google has a plan to...
DARPA launches dragnet program to monitor drones in cities
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As our skies increasingly fill up with swarming drones we need ways to monitor and manage our airspaces. Amid the rise of drones, or small Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, is developing technology to provide persistent, wide-area surveillance of all...
Drone forensics is now a thing
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Where did that drone come from? Now we know… Dunkin Donuts use drones to deliver – guess what!? Donuts. But criminals are using them to deliver much more unsavoury items into prisons. The problem has grown so fast that now one wireless and mobile technology company,...
SRI unveils Minority Report like touchless biometric technologies
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Big brother biometric technologies that can ID individuals remotely arrives. You are used to being tracked everywhere you go online but offline? Prepare for a world where there is no hiding place. Iris recognition has been used as a biometric for access control applications for...
Scientists use WiFi to read your emotions
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are edging closer to living in the world of Minority Report, surrounded by technologies that authorise us, sense us and interact with us remotely, and now the only thing that is fiction is privacy. Whether it’s at your local fuel station or at...
The future of jobs in a Machine World
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are all aware that technology is capable of replacing particular categories of jobs, but often those jobs “belong to someone else” and the impact on our own jobs is minimal. Today though new classes of emerging technologies, from artificial intelligence to machine vision are...
New brain scanning technologies can pull secrets from your brain waves
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF New brain wave monitoring devices are making it easier than ever for companies, governments and institutions to pull your darkest secrets from your head. In a world where biometric security is often seen as the de-facto consumer and enterprise security technology, and where Touchless...
US Government drafts plans to confuse cyber-criminals
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Hackers, even AI ones, can’t break into your systems if they’re confused… or so goes the theory. Intelligence work is often as much about gathering information as it is about disseminating misinformation. To that end, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the branch...
New airborne city wide surveillance systems watch your every move
Google Earth with TiVo capability was the pitch and security forces around the world are starting to snap the technology up
Weather bombs could help scientists better predict earthquakes
Little heard S-waves are the key to seeing inside our planet Small, intense storms known as “weather bombs” may trigger rare tremors deep within the Earth, offering scientists a new way to study the mysterious structure and inner workings of the planet, according to a new study. A “weather bomb”...
Police use DNA to create photofits of criminals
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Many crimes go unresolved because there are no witnesses but now a new technique can create photofits from fragments of DNA. A murder has been committed, and all the cops have to go on is a trace of DNA left at the scene. It doesn’t...
Researchers secure the Internet of Everything with Dark Web tech
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The TOR network protects the anonymity of users in the Dark Web, now researchers think it’s the perfect tool to secure the Internet of Things. The privacy software Tor has helped everything from drug dealing marketplaces to whistleblowing websites evade surveillance on the Darknet, the shadowy under...
Guardian angel AUDREY keeps firefighters safe
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Our first responders put their lives on the line for us every day, now they have a new guardian angel AI. Todays firefighters only have their wits and five senses to rely on inside a burning building but research developed in part by NASA’s Jet Propulsion...
DARPA’s king Robo-hacker “Mayhem” proves no match for humans
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF DARPA’S Cyber Grand Challenge is over but the winner is still no match for humans. The Heartbleed security bug existed in many of the world’s computer systems for nearly two-and-a-half years before it was discovered and a fix circulated in the spring of 2014,...
DARPA teams go head to head to find the worlds best robo-hacker
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Humans can no longer keep up with the tusnami of cyber threats but the robo-hackers can. Could you invent an autonomous hacking system that could find and fix vulnerabilities in computer systems before criminals could exploit them, and without any human being involved? ...
Bomb sniffing UAV’s can thwart terrorist bombs
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Security forces are about to get a new tool in the fight against terror. Scientists at a US university have developed “bomb sniffing drones” which are being lauded as the ultimate weapon against terror attacks involving explosives. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison...
