DARPA plans for military robots that hide on the sea floor

DARPA plans for military robots that hide on the sea floor

BY NICOLETTE EMMINO

What many protected citizens of the United States are unaware of is that the U.S. military spends a great deal of money and exhausts countless resources trying to figure out how to move its defensive and offensive properties around the world when or if needed. During a time of crisis, this can be quite challenging. Now, researchers at the Defense Advances Research Projects Agency (DARPA) want to develop a plan to secure these assets on the ocean floors and have them launch on cue.

Image of systems that would hibernate in deep-sea capsules, wake up when commanded, and provide support as needed. (Image via DARPA)

DARPA’s Upward Falling Payloads (UFP) program is currently bringing this tactic to life, creating technologies that would allow the U.S. military to hide unmanned systems on the seafloor, even for periods of years, and activate them with just the push of a button. DARPA refers to these robots as having “falling upwards” capabilities.

“The goal is to support the Navy with distributed technologies anywhere, anytime over large maritime areas. If we can do this rapidly, we can get close to the areas we need to affect, or become widely distributed without delay,” said Andy Coon, DARPA program manager.

Researchers are now considering technical challenges to make these systems come to life. The UFP system envisioned would consist of three main components that would need to be explored further. These components are the “payload,” which executes the water or air applications after reaching the surface; the “riser,” which provides the pressure tolerance needed; and the UFP communications to trigger the launch.

DARPA will reach out to technical communities that conduct deep-ocean engineering and that can offer insights into signal propagation in the water and on the sea floor.

According to DARPA, the UFP program is not a weapons program. Depending on the specific payloads, these systems would provide non-lethal, but useful, capabilities such as situational awareness, disruption, deception, networking, rescue or any other mission that would benefit from these hidden seafloor robots.

When looking into the future of these systems, DARPA foresees unmanned aerial vehicles that would launch to the surface in capsules and then take off, providing aerial situational awareness plus networking and decoy functions.

A proposer’s day is scheduled for January 25, 2013 in the DARPA Conference Center, in Arlington, VA. ■