Tagged: DARPA

Busted–HUGE LIES! Government Files Ripped Wide Open On H.A.A.R.P! More Dangerous and Deadly Than Ever! (Videos Included)

(Before It’s News)

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

“And the nations were angry, and your wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that you should give reward to your servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear your name, small and great; and should destroy them which destroy the earth.” Revelation 11:18

HAARP as we know it is a very evil government organization and is more than likely responsible, I believe, for the tsunami in 2011 that caused the entire Fukushima incident (video provided).  Why? In order to poison our water and part of our food supply! The videos I will share expose the truth of what exactly HAARP is, and the power they hold in their hands—they could literally destroy us if they so choose to!

The government elite is purposely messing with our weather, and with the entire earth for pretty wicked purposes—control!  This explains all the mysterious mass animaly deaths everywhere, as well as bizarre weather patterns, strange sounds, and more.  Not to mention, they also have the ability to utilize this ‘weapon’ for mind control, which is also mentioned in the below videos.

According to Wikipedia, HAARP is:

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the University of Alaska, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).[1] It has allowed the US military to communicate with its fleet of submarines by sending radio signals over long distances, via the ionosphere. The ocean acts as the antenna, and submarines are able to pick up the signal.[2][3]

Designed and built by BAE Advanced Technologies (BAEAT), its purpose is to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance.[4] The HAARP program operates a major sub-arctic facility, named the HAARP Research Station, on an Air Force–owned site near Gakona, Alaska.

The most prominent instrument at the HAARP Station is the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high-power radio frequency transmitter facility operating in the high frequency (HF) band. The IRI is used to temporarily excite a limited area of the Ionosphere. Other instruments, such as a VHF and a UHF radar, a fluxgate magnetometer, a digisonde (an ionospheric sounding device), and an induction magnetometer, are used to study the physical processes that occur in the excited region.

Too bad they could not tell the whole truth! However, I am providing this information to you so you are aware what is going on, and how it relates to end time events.

God’s Word says the weather will be bizarre in these times, but does not say how it happens. His Word says mass animals will die, but we are not told exactly how. It says water will be turned to blood, and there will be signs in the heavens; again, how and why was not shared with us.

The NWO can and will destroy the earth ‘as we know it’.  Not to fear, prophecy must be fulfilled! Time is short.

SOUND of HAARP WEAPON IN ACTION !!! SCARY Lights & Noise!!

Real news footage from two years ago regarding mysterious and frightening HAARP activity.

HAARP Holes In Heaven (Full Length Documentary)

YouTube Commentary:

This documentary examines the controversial military program based on Tesla technology – its possible effects on weather and use in mind control. H.A.A.R.P. is a scientific research facility, located near Gakona, in the remote Alaskan outback and is a joint Navy and Air Force project. This facility is used to study the earth’s Ionosphere, the electrically-charged belt surrounding our planet’s upper atmosphere, ranging between 40 to 60 miles from its surface.

More specifically, H.A.A.R.P. is a controversial high frequency radio transmitter, or “ionospheric heater”. The military intends to use this billion-watt pulsed radio beam in our upper atmosphere, which will create extremely low frequency waves, or ELF waves. This technology will enhance communications with submarines and will allow us to “see” into the Earth, detecting anything from oil reserves to hidden underground military targets. H.A.A.R.P.’s roots can be traced back to work of Nikola Tesla, a Yugoslavian scientist, who’s achievements include the Tesla Coil or “magnifying transmitter” which is still used in televisions and radio today.

HAARP Tsunami 2013–Illuminati Movie Messaging

The above is taken from a movie in which the Illuminati left their message. To find out more about this movie, follow the links given below.

YouTube Links:

Celebrity Illuminati Members: http://church-of-illumination.com/ill…

More Info About The NWO: http://church-of-illumination.com/art…

HAARP IN TSUNAMI JAPAN EARTHQUAKE

 

2013 IS STRANGE Part 21 OCTOBER

Many strange things  have been happening, and many people’s lives shaken to the core. Oh, you don’t believe tragedy will come to the strong, powerful, and ever-so-mighty USA? Ha! Just wait and watch. I promise you—it is coming! Sooner than you think!

Lockheed Martin announces plans for SR-72 hypersonic spy drone

Written by RT News

Published time: November 02, 2013

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Aircraft experts and military aficionados have cause to rejoice now that Lockheed Martin has debuted the SR-72 unmanned spy plane, the long-awaited successor to the SR-71 Blackbird and potentially the first hypersonic craft to enter service.

Plans for the SR-72 drone were first unveiled Friday in an  Aviation Week article which revealed that Lockheed Martin’s Skunk  Works advanced development program has drafted plans for a plane  that could fly as fast as Mach 6 – twice the speed of the  Blackbird.

The SR-72 would have the ability to gather intelligence, conduct  surveillance and reconnaissance, and launch combat strikes at an  unprecedented speed. The plane is designed to fill what is  considered in military circles to be a gap in capabilities  between the spy satellites orbiting Earth and the manned and  unmanned technology meant to replace the SR-71.

The original Blackbird, which was introduced in 1966 and served  until 1999, was primarily used by the US Air Force and NASA to  collect intelligence through the Cold War. Along with flying at  speeds fast enough to outrun a surface-to-air missile, the  Blackbird also avoided enemy radar by flying at low altitudes. A  total of 32 aircraft were built and, although 12 were lost to  accidents, not a single one was lost to enemy combat.

Yet the sheer cost of replicating the Blackbird has prevented the  US military from commissioning such a powerful weapon at a time  when the Air Force has dominated international skies with the  drone program.

But Lockheed Martin now believes it has encountered a  technological breakthrough rendering the conversation around  costs irrelevant.

Brad Leland, portfolio manager for air-breathing hypersonic  technologies, said the crux of the new project hinges on an air  breathing engine that combines the traditional turbine with a  scramjet. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency  (DARPA) explored the idea on previous projects but abandoned it  because of cost.

The Skunk Works has been working with Aerojet Rocketdyne for  the past seven years to develop a method to integrate an  off-the-shelf turbine with a scramjet to power the aircraft from  standstill to Mach 6 plus,” Leland said. “Our approach  builds on HTV-3X, but this extends a lot beyond that and  addresses the one key technical issue that remained on that  program: the high-speed turbine engine.”

Leland, who said that roughly 20 employees have worked on the  project so far, elaborated in an interview with Reuters.

What we are doing is defining a missile that would have a  small incremental cost to go at hypersonic speed,” he said.   “Hypersonic is the new stealth. Your adversaries cannot hide  or move their critical assets. They will be found. That becomes a  game-changer.”

A Chip In The Head: Brain Implants Will Be Connecting People To The Internet By The Year 2020

Infowars.com

Michael Snyder The American Dream

October 30, 2013

Would you like to surf the Internet, make a phone call or send a text message using only your brain?  Would you like to “download” the content of a 500 page book into your memory in less than a second?  Would you like to have extremely advanced nanobots constantly crawling around in your body monitoring it for disease?  Would you like to be able to instantly access the collective knowledge base of humanity wherever you are?

 

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

All of that may sound like science fiction, but these are technologies that some of the most powerful high tech firms in the world actually believe are achievable by the year 2020.  However, with all of the potential “benefits” that such technology could bring, there is also the potential for great tyranny.  Just think about it.  What do you think that the governments of the world could do if almost everyone had a mind reading brain implant that was connected to the Internet?  Could those implants be used to control and manipulate us?  Those are frightening things to consider.

For now, most of the scientists that are working on brain implant technology do not seem to be too worried about those kinds of concerns.  Instead, they are pressing ahead into realms that were once considered to be impossible.

Right now, there are approximately 100,000 people around the world that have implants in their brains.  Most of those are for medical reasons.

But this is just the beginning.  According to the Boston Globe, the U.S. government plans “to spend more than $70 million over five years to jump to the next level of brain implants”.

This new project is being called the Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies (SUBNETS), and the goal is to be able to monitor the “mental health” of soldiers and veterans.  The following is how a recent CNET article described SUBNETS…

SUBNETS is inspired by Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), a surgical treatment that involves implanting a brain pacemaker in the patient’s skull to interfere with brain activity to help with symptoms of diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson’s. DARPA’s device will be similar, but rather than targeting one specific symptom, it will be able to monitor and analyse data in real time and issue a specific intervention according to brain activity.

This kind of technology is being developed by the private sector as well.  In fact, according to Scientific American scientists are becoming increasingly excited about how brain implants can be used to “reboot” the brains of people with depression…

Psychological depression is more than an emotional state. Good evidence for that comes from emerging new uses for a  technology already widely prescribed for Parkinson’s patients. The more neurologists and surgeons learn about the aptly named deep brain stimulation, the more they are convinced that the currents from the technology’s implanted electrodes can literally reboot brain circuits involved with the mood disorder.

Would you like to have your brain “rebooted” by a chip inside your head?

And of course this is how brain implants will be marketed to the public at first.  They will be sold as something that has great “health benefits”.  For example, one firm has developed a brain implant that can detect and treat epileptic seizures

The NeuroPace RNS is the first implant to listen to brain waves and autonomously decide when to apply a therapy to prevent an epileptic seizure. It was developed by a company with a staff of less than 90 people, only about 30 on the core electronic, mechanical, and software engineering teams.

A different team of researchers has discovered that it can stimulate the repair of brain tissue in rats using brain implants

Stroke and Parkinson’s Disease patients may benefit from a controversial experiment that implanted microchips into lab rats. Scientists say the tests produced effective results in brain damage research.

Rats showed motor function in formerly damaged gray matter after a neural microchip was implanted under the rat’s skull and electrodes were transferred to the rat’s brain. Without the microchip, rats with damaged brain tissue did not have motor function. Both strokes and Parkinson’s can cause permanent neurological damage to brain tissue, so this scientific research brings hope.

Most of us won’t need brain implants for medical reasons though.

So how will they be marketed to the rest of us?

Well, what if you were told that they could give you “super powers”?

Would you want a brain implant then?

The following is a short excerpt from a recent Scientific American article

Our world is determined by the limits of our five senses. We can’t hear pitches that are too high or low, nor can we see ultraviolet or infrared light—even though these phenomena are not fundamentally different from the sounds and sights that our ears and eyes can detect. But what if it were possible to widen our sensory boundaries beyond the physical limitations of our anatomy? In a study published recently inNature Communications, scientists used brain implants to teach rats to “see” infrared light, which they usually find invisible. The implications are tremendous: if the brain is so flexible it can learn to process novel sensory signals, people could one day feel touch through prosthetic limbs, see heat via infrared light or even develop a sixth sense for magnetic north.

And some very prominent Internet firms simply take it for granted that most of us will eventually have brain implants that connect us directly to the Internet…

Google has a plan. Eventually it wants to get into your brain. “When you think about something and don’t really know much about it, you will automatically get information,” Google CEO Larry Page said in Steven Levy’s book, “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives.” “Eventually you’ll have an implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer.”

At this point you might be thinking that this will never happen because getting a brain implant is a very complicated and expensive procedure.

brainchip

Well, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, that is not actually true.  In fact, the typical procedure is very quick and often only requires just an overnight stay in the hospital…

Neural implants, also called brain implants, are medical devices designed to be placed under the skull, on the surface of the brain. Often as small as an aspirin, implants use thin metal electrodes to “listen” to brain activity and in some cases to stimulate activity in the brain. Attuned to the activity between neurons, a neural implant can essentially “listen” to your brain activity and then “talk” directly to your brain.

If that prospect makes you queasy, you may be surprised to learn that the installation of a neural implant is relatively simple and fast. Under anesthesia, an incision is made in the scalp, a hole is drilled in the skull, and the device is placed on the surface of the brain. Diagnostic communication with the device can take place wirelessly. When it is not an outpatient procedure, patients typically require only an overnight stay at the hospital.

In the future, the minds of most people could potentially be connected to the Internet 24 hours a day.  Imagine sending an email or answering your phone by just thinking about it.  According to the New York Times, this is where we are eventually heading…

Soon, we might interact with our smartphones and computers simply by using our minds. In a couple of years, we could be turning on the lights at home just by thinking about it, or sending an e-mail from our smartphone without even pulling the device from our pocket. Farther into the future, your robot assistant will appear by your side with a glass of lemonade simply because it knows you are thirsty.

Researchers in Samsung’s Emerging Technology Lab are testing tablets that can be controlled by your brain, using a cap that resembles a ski hat studded with monitoring electrodes, the MIT Technology Review, the science and technology journal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported this month.

The technology, often called a brain computer interface, was conceived to enable people with paralysis and other disabilities to interact with computers or control robotic arms, all by simply thinking about such actions. Before long, these technologies could well be in consumer electronics, too.

So how far away is such technology?

According to a Computer World UK article, Intel believes that they will have Internet-connected brain implants in people’s heads by the year 2020…

By the year 2020, you won’t need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel researchers. Instead, users will open documents and surf the web using nothing more than their brain waves.

Scientists at Intel’s research lab in Pittsburgh are working to find ways to read and harness human brain waves so they can be used to operate computers, television sets and cell phones. The brain waves would be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in people’s brains.

The scientists say the plan is not a scene from a sci-fi movie, Big Brother won’t be planting chips in your brain against your will. Researchers expect that consumers will want the freedom they will gain by using the implant.

And that would only be the tip of the iceberg.  Futurist Ray Kurzweil is actually convinced that we will all eventually have hordes of nanobots running around our bodies monitoring our health and looking for disease…

‘Bridge two (is) the biotechnology revolution, where we can reprogram biology away from disease.

‘And that is not the end-all either.

‘Bridge three is to go beyond biology, to the nanotechnology revolution.

‘At that point we can have little robots, sometimes called nanobots, that augment your immune system.

‘We can create an immune system that recognizes all disease, and if a new disease emerged, it could be reprogrammed to deal with new pathogens.’

Such robots, according to Kurzweil, will help fight diseases, improve health and allow people to remain active for longer.

Are you ready for this kind of a future?

These technologies are being developed right now, and they will be enthusiastically adopted by a large segment of the general public.

At some point in the future, having a brain implant may be as common as it is to use a smart phone today.

And of course the mainstream media will be telling all of us how wonderful it is to have a brain implant.  If you doubt this, just check out the following NBC News report where we are all told that we can expect to have microchip implants by the year 2017…

So are you ready for this brave new world?

Will you ever let them put a chip in your head?

Please share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

Robotics revolution to replace most human workers in three generations; labor class to be systematically eliminated

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

Sunday, September 29, 2013
robot
(NaturalNews) As much as seventy percent of the human race will become obsolete  within just three generations. Why? Because robotics technology is advancing at  such a rapid pace that highly-capable humanoid robots with advanced vision  recognition and motor coordination systems are going to take over most menial  labor jobs.
Supporting this conclusion, a new  study just released by Oxford scientists concludes that 47% of all jobs are  “at risk” of being replaced by automation systems and robots in just one  generation (roughly 20 years). But this is just the opening chapter of the  robotics revolution that will rapidly make human labor all but  obsolete.
In my estimation, over the next three generations (about 75  years), we will see humanoid robots take over nearly all traditional labor roles  in society, including manufacturing, agriculture, construction, firefighting,  food service and even community policing. Most of the physical work done today  by humans will be turned over to humanoid-shaped robots built much the same way  we are: two arms, two legs, two eyes and roughly the size and shape of a 5′ 9″  man.
This, in turn, will make virtually all human laborers obsolete.  There will be no more need for people to pick crops, paint houses, clean  windows, drive ambulances or even fight wars. Humanoid robots will take over  every repetitious, dangerous, disgusting or boring task that humans currently  tackle, from cleaning toilets and sweeping floors to driving taxis.
A  fascinating new book is coming out on this very topic in just a few days. It’s  called Our Final  Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era by James  Barrat. I’ve pre-ordered the book to make sure I get a copy when it’s released  on October 1. Obviously, I haven’t read the book yet, but it sounds like it  covers what I’m talking about right here: the end of an entire class of human  beings as robots rise up and displace them.

Why a future full of robots may not be as rosy as you think

To the  typical naive citizen, all this talk about robots taking over menial labor jobs  sounds futuristic and exciting. “We can all sit back and relax!” they’ll say.  “The robots will do all the  work for us!”
Except for just one thing: the only real reason laborer  populations are tolerated by the rich and powerful who really control the world  is because laborers are needed to run the economy. Someone needs to pick the  crops, sweep the floors and do the dry cleaning, in other words. Once capable  humanoid robots transition into all the jobs currently carried out by  flesh-and-blood humans, there will be no further need for a large segment of  the human population.
This, combined with the terrible cost the world  population is accruing in terms of environmental destruction and use of  dwindling resources, already has world leaders like Bill  Gates talking about population control… also called “depopulation”  solutions. Global depopulation technologies have been under development for  decades, running the gamut from mild to aggressive. Here are the three main  types of depopulation technologies that exist right now:

Depopulation technologies, from mild to aggressive

#1) Family planning –  birth control, abortions and one-child policies that reduce population over time  by limiting childbirth. This is seen by globalists as the most “humane” way to  reduce global population because it does not require the actual killing of adult  humans.
#2) Covert infertility technologies – these includes GMOs and  mercury in vaccines, both of which either cause spontaneous abortions or result  in widespread infertility. Plastics chemicals also fall into this category. The  key with these systems is that they are deployed covertly, population-wide,  through either the medical system or the food system. The global elite who are  aware of these depopulation vectors  intentionally avoid non-GMO foods, mercury-laced vaccines and non-organic food  for this very reason.
#3) Direct kill weapons – the primary weapon in  this category is bioweapons. The U.S. Army, in particular, has already  developed level IV bioweapons capable of killing 98% of those it infects. Other  direct-kill weapons include nuclear power plant sabotage, nuclear war (missiles  striking high population areas) and an intentional collapse of the global food  supply, resulting in mass starvation.
Globalist power players are  currently pushing strategy #1 very aggressively through family planning and  abortions. Strategy #2 is also well under way with mass vaccination and GMO  consumption. Strategy #3 is being held in reserve, ready to be unleashed when  the time comes to eliminate the masses and transition the global economy to a  combination of humanoid robots (the majority) run by a small minority of human  elitists.
That’s the final equation in all this: Laborers will be  replaced by robots and phased out of the human gene pool one way or another.  What the globalists want remaining is a highly-automated society with a  relatively small number of humans remaining who are high-IQ individuals capable  of focusing on technological advancement for the survival of the human race in a  cosmos full of competing civilizations. One of the primary focus areas of this  effort will be space-based weapons to defend humanity against non-terrestrial  threats. Those potential threats include widely-acknowledged things such as  asteroids as well as “top secret” things such as advanced non-terrestrial  civilizations mounting an attack against Earth.
In the cosmic scale of  things, by the way, it’s actually a very important strategy to shore up  strategic defenses of our home world, especially as we currently have no backup  plan and no colonies on other worlds. If Earth is destroyed, humanity dies with  it.

Who will be allowed to live? Those who can create

Here’s how the  globalists think: In order to shape the future in a way that conserves resources  while maximizing the technological progress of human civilization, all so-called  “useless eaters” must be eliminated, as they waste far too much food, energy and  land. The precious resources of planet Earth must be conserved for those few who  have the intelligence to know what to do with it.
Over the next century,  it will become obvious that only innovative, high-IQ individuals who can  out-think the robots have any real value to society. People who can program  the robots — or help design new ones — are extremely valuable and will be  allowed to live. People who can invent new technologies, create inspiring art,  or write original fiction will also be valued precisely because they can do the  things robots can’t.
Specialty experts like surgeons will see their roles  radically shifted. They will become strategic decision makers while their  companion robots become the mechanics who actually carry out the procedures with  extreme precision. Soldiers, too, will become in-the-field strategic decision  makers managing squads of robotic grunts. This means the number of soldiers  needed to run a war is drastically reduced, and human soldier casualties will be  drastically reduced as well. (Which creates a dangerous incentive for  imperialist nations to start more wars, thinking, “Oh, it’s only robots that are  dying, not people.”)
The roles of truck drivers, police officers, bank  tellers, fast food workers, food preparers, lawn care workers and many others  will be radically shifted as robots take over. Importantly, as each robot is purchased to do a job, it replaces a human worker who will then become  jobless.

How robots will multiply the great socioeconomic divide

Robots will  sharply divide the economic classes. Those who are replaced by robots will  become jobless and homeless. Those whose lives are enriched by the benefit of  the robots will become abundantly wealthy in the material quality of their  lives. (Although, notably, robots will not make their spiritual lives any more  meaningful, so don’t expect the robot revolution to equate to increased  happiness.)
In time, the number of people displaced by robots will become  so large and so enraged that mass riots can be expected to unfold across the  cities of first-world nations where robots enjoy widespread deployment. These  riots will reinforce the idea to the globalists that all these “useless eaters”  need to be eliminated. After all, they no longer have anything to offer society  that isn’t already accomplished more efficiently by robots.
Expect to see  accelerated efforts to find covert ways to eliminate these people through food  and medicine vectors, including “free vaccines for the poor” campaigns that  intentionally inject displaced workers with vaccines which cause medium-term  death or widespread spontaneous abortions combined with infertility. For an  historical reference to support this, note that the polio  vaccines given to nearly 100 million Americans were later found to be  contaminated with hidden cancer viruses. For decades, the CDC openly  acknowledged this, but in a recent revisionist history scheme, the  CDC scrubbed any mention of polio vaccine contamination from its website,  hoping to erase this scientific truth from society’s memory.

How to make sure the future needs you

If you’re a cashier, a garbage  collector, a drywall installer or any sort of ditch digger, the sobering truth  of the matter is that the future doesn’t need you. And the system will find a  way to eliminate you a few short years after your job is eliminated. After all,  the world’s powerful decision makers can’t have hundreds of millions of useless  eaters rioting in the streets interfering with progress, right? (That’s the way  they think about it, anyway…)
So the only real way to ensure the  future needs you is to invest in your education and boost your mental  skills. Learn how to do something robots will not be able to do over the next 75  years: innovate, create and communicate. Make your dreams a reality through  disciplined self-investment, entrepreneurship and action.
The more  advanced your skills and mental capabilities, the more of a buffer you’ll put  between yourself and all those who will be “soft killed” as the robots take over  the labor jobs in society.  Robots, for example, will never be public relations consultants, fashion  designers or fiction writers. They won’t be journalists, screenwriters or  psychologists. Robots do not have minds, spirits or souls, so they can never tap  into the infinite creative potential of the human mind.
Anything you can  accomplish that is creative will never be fully replicated by robots because  creativity simply cannot be programmed. It can be simulated in some ways, but a  robotic, computer-driven brain can never match the creative capacity of the  non-material mind. Thus, conscious human beings with souls and minds will always  have an edge over mechanical robots as long as they develop their unique  spiritual gifts.
Here are some of the roles robots WILL play in society,  however, as humanoid robots become increasingly affordable:

The humanoid robot rollout: a rough timeline

• The first humanoid robots  we’ll see will be soldiers. They will cost as much as $20 million each, and they  will carry special sensors (infra-red vision) and equipment (emergency first  aid) to track enemy combatants and help existing soldiers be more “effective” on  the battlefield. Over time, this will transition to robotic soldiers becoming  highly-efficient killing machines. Terminators, in other words, will soon carry  rifles, kick in doors and toss grenades at “enemy combatants.”
• As the  cost of humanoid robots comes down, they will be deployed in municipal roles.  Cities will be able to invest in robots as police officers once they approach  the $2 million price range. Expect to see these appear and function much like  the policing robots depicted in the sci-fi movie “Elysium” starring Matt Damon.  View the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIBtePb-dGY
As all  this happens, the mass production of humanoid robots for military and police  applications will bring down costs and improve reliability. This will translate  into more affordable models which will then be easily deployed in a wider range  of commercial applications:
• At the $1 million price range, humanoid  robots will be embraced by the private sector for factory jobs: product  assembly, welding, warehouse logistics and so on. While $1 million may seem  high, compared to a human worker who shows up drunk, injures himself on the job,  then files a lawsuit against the company, a million bucks is actually a cheap  investment for a worker that never whines, moans, steals or sexually assaults  fellow workers.
• Once humanoid robots reach roughly $500,000 in cost,  they will be widely adopted by agriculture. A reliable ag-robot can replace  several low-cost laborers, all while performing the job with better quality  control, fewer e.coli infections and no labor laws to worry about. Robots  don’t get sick from pesticide exposure, either, allowing the agricultural  industry to unleash extremely toxic chemicals with zero risk of lawsuits from  the workers. This chemically-contaminated food will be fed to the unemployed  masses, of course, in an effort to kill them off for reasons mentioned above.  (Upper-class citizens will insist on eating organic, non-poisoned  foods.)
• When robots reach roughly the cost of a new home ($300,000 on  average), they will become widely embraced by families and individuals. These  general-purpose robots will be sold as a hardware platform for an “entry-level”  lease price, and buyers will pay a monthly fee much like paying on a home or  vehicle.
The “base price” robot will be extremely limited in function,  most likely performing only very simple jobs such as sweeping floors, serving  drinks or providing basic watchful security. Owners who want their robots to  perform more complex functions will need to purchase additional functional  upgrades. Need your robot to do the dishes? That’s a $200 / month software  upgrade. Want it to wash your car? That’s another monthly fee. Whatever you want  the robot to do for you — take out the trash, mow the yard, feed the cat, guard  the house at night — will require paying another monthly fee. (BTW, this is a  hugely lucrative business to get into once the technology becomes available. The  first trillion-dollar company will no doubt be involved in  robotics.)
What consumers won’t be told, by the way, is that all home  robots will be spying on homeowners for the NSA, providing direct visual  feeds that are archived in the government’s secret archives. Robots will also  overhear all conversations and they will be programmed to “red flag” anyone who  talks about freedom, or liberty, or other “illicit” activities which may even  include buying and selling heirloom seeds.
In summary, robots will, over  time, transition from extremely expensive, high-end government soldiers to  affordable, mass-produced consumer household helpers that also function as spy  portals for the government to keep tabs on the population. Robots will also play  a huge role in hospitals and health care during all this. One of the driving  forces behind robotics R&D in Japan, it turns out, is the need for home care  robots to aid Japan’s aging population.

The key technologies still needed for humanoid robots to become  feasible

Right now, robots do not exist that can perform all these  functions. Today’s humanoid robots are lucky to be able to walk up a flight of  stairs without falling over. Portable power is also extremely limiting right now  and may be the primary challenge for the commercialization of humanoid  robots.
Here are some of the challenges that need to be overcome for  robots to become commercially viable:
• On-board power: current batteries  are lousy sources of power. This is why most robots you see in online videos are  tethered to an external power source.
• Vision recognition and on-board  computing. Currently vision recognition algorithms are slow and exhibit poor  accuracy. The seemingly simple act of recognizing objects in a given space  remains highly elusive to robotics software developers.
• Motor  coordination, actuation and strength. This is one of the big ones we humans take  for granted. How, exactly, do you design and build a robot that can pick up your  pet dog without breaking its neck accidentally? It’s a tremendously complicated  endeavor, and today’s robots are nowhere near the level of sophistication needed  in this area.
• Behavioral limits and robot safety. How do you teach a  robot not to accidentally harm a living creature such as the family dog or a  human baby? This will be required before robots can be sold into homes, yet this  is also a highly complex area of R&D that actually requires the engineering  of a deep “moral code” of robotics. The programming of moral codes is  extraordinarily difficult because it requires the development of an entire  curriculum of life that must be taught to the robot brain. For example, robots  will need to be programmed with some sort of “compassion mirroring” circuit that  help the robot “feel” what others are feeling around it, so that if it  accidentally steps on someone’s toe and hears that person say, “Ouch!” the robot  actually feels a sort of mirror-image “pain” in its own brain, and thereby  learns not to harm other humans.
Most human beings already have this  capacity, by the way. Those who do not have this so-called “empathy circuit” are  called sociopaths. They tend to become high-level politicians and corporate  CEOs because both positions are much easier to achieve if you have absolutely no  compassion for fellow human beings.
One other aspect of all this is that  robots will need to be taught rules for self-preservation. This also implies  that robots will need to be taught the highly complex realm of “cause and  reaction.” This furthermore implies that robots must be taught the laws of  physics so that it can, for example, anticipate how a falling object might harm  its own body or the body of its owner. While such things appear simple to a  human mind, they are wildly challenging problems for software developers dealing  with physical robotic hardware operating in a three-dimensional  space.
Even the simple act of picking a strawberry requires astonishing  coordination between vision, brain interpretation, muscle coordination, timing  and so on. How do you program a robot to avoid crushing the strawberry while  gripping it firmly enough to pull it free from its stem? How do you program a  bipedal robot to walk through strawberry fields without crushing plants and  smashing the fruit? These are extremely complex problems, and it will take  decades to solve them.

The bottom line

The upshot of all this is that even though robotics is  still a long way from achieving the level of sophistication required to see  humanoid robots deployed in military, commercial and household applications, the  day is coming that robots will replace most human laborers.
When that day  comes, unskilled laborers will have no (commercial) value to society. Robotics  will expand the divide between the ultra-wealthy and the homeless, jobless  masses. The global elite will deploy means of depopulation or population control  to eliminate the “useless eaters” and drastically reduce human population on the  planet.
The only humans “allowed” to remain alive will be those who  possess valuable intelligence, skills or creativity that robots cannot  replicate. People with creative skills will always be valued, even in a highly  automated society.
The best way to protect your future and avoid becoming  obsolete is to invest in developing your own creative skills so that you are  always able to offer something to society which robots cannot. This will ensure  your continued value.
If you have children, guiding them toward the  development of creative skills is the best way to ensure their long-term  survival in a society that’s transitioning into robotics  automation.

 

Tough robo-challenge casts robots as rescuers

New Scientist

by Hal Hodson

11 September 2013

 

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The DARPA Robotics Challenge will see humanoid robots competing to complete rescue missions, and could lead to robots better adapted to living alongside us

IN A side-street warehouse near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s most advanced humanoid robots hangs limp from a steel gantry. Feet angled down like a ballet dancer, it is nearly 2 metres tall and as heavy as a sumo wrestler.

This is an Atlas robot, one of seven made by robotics company Boston Dynamics to take part in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, run by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The world’s top specialists are competing to design a robot that can carry out emergency-response duties in disaster situations that are often too dangerous for humans, such as last year’s nuclear accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant. In December, Atlas and a motley crew of other robots will take to an obstacle course designed by DARPA in Pensacola, Florida. The robots will face eight challenges, including traversing uneven ground, getting into and driving a rescue vehicle, breaking down a wall and shutting off valves.

There is more than glory and $2 million prize money at stake: the competition could change the future of robotics research. “This is the grandest, the most exciting, and possibly the most important robotics project ever,” says Dennis Hong, leader of the team from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, whose robot is called THOR.

Russ Tedrake, who leads the MIT team with Seth Teller, hands me a pair of lab glasses as we walk up to the Atlas. Its software brain is held in a nearby bank of PCs. “We put the robot out here because it’s dangerous,” says Tedrake. “We wanted the people working with it to take it seriously. It could shoot hydraulic fluid 30 feet across the room at any time. And it’s incredibly strong – it can punch through walls.”

Tedrake’s remit is the artificial intelligence which controls how the robot moves and grasps objects, while Teller oversees communications between the robot and its operators. Robots are pretty good at specific tasks, such as walking over to something and grabbing it, Tedrake says. “Where they fall down is planning what to do next. That’s where the human comes in.”

In MIT’s approach, a team of people monitors Atlas’s decisions and planned movements, approving those deemed correct and adjusting any that are unsuitable. For instance, Atlas will ask its handlers to identify objects it finds, something that is easy for a human but hard for machine-vision systems. If its leg gets stuck during a manoeuvre, the human observer in charge of locomotion can instruct Atlas to move the leg a little to clear an obstacle.

Such action will probably be required on one simple-sounding task that many of the teams think will in reality be the hardest – getting into a car. “We actually Fosbury-flopped into the car to get some kind of points,” says Tedrake, referring to his team’s performance in the first round of the challenge. That was the simulated Virtual Robotic Challenge in July, which earned the team one of the US government-funded Atlas robots to work with. “It’s an incredibly complicated set of movements.”

A team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is feeling pretty confident that its robot can get into a car. Group leader Brett Kennedy describes RoboSimian as a cross between an orang-utan and a wolf spider – far less humanoid than Atlas. All its sensing equipment is inside the body and it is equally adept at grasping and moving with any of its four identical arms – each with seven joints. This gives it more options for navigating an obstacle course. Kennedy says they have talked about shimmying up a ladder section like a monkey, without using the steps. “It’s possible because we have this symmetry,” says Kennedy.

A team led by Tony Stentz at Carnegie Mellon University is also taking an odd spin on a humanoid robot. Their robot, called CHIMP, has legs that can fold up and double as treads when the robot needs to traverse rough terrain. Like RoboSimian, CHIMP is designed to be statically stable, so isn’t good on the move, but doesn’t need to use complicated algorithms to balance a bipedal gait. “This means we can position ourselves in one place and manipulate things easily,” says Stentz. “We feel good about the tasks that require us to operate tools and manipulate objects with our arms.”

The pressure is on. “This is a ridiculously difficult challenge,” says Hong. “There are going to be robots falling down, grey smoke, 30 minutes just standing there doing nothing.” Next year, in the second year of the challenge, there will be a marked improvement, he says.

“You’re going to see a lot of very impressive things from the teams – just like the autonomous car challenges.”

Hong is referring to the DARPA Urban Challenge, which sparked research that has since delivered Google’s self-driving car. Roboticists expect the challenge to improve humanoid robotics, too. “If a robot can do all of these eight tasks, it means that robots can be used for everything.”

Fukushima trigger

THE only non-US entrant in DARPA’s Robotics Challenge is Schaft, a robotics firm based in Tokyo. Schaft was spun off by two roboticists originally at the University of Tokyo, Yuto Nakanishi and Junichi Urata. They were driven to take part because they believe that humanoid robots should have been more useful in the response to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown.

Narito Suzuki, also at Schaft, says the strengths of their robot are the power it generates and its stability as it navigates. “Most life-sized humanoid robots generate one-tenth of the power that humans do, but ours generates the same amount,” he says. “Our robot doesn’t fall down even if it is kicked.”