Pentagon teams up with Apple, Boeing to develop wearable tech
Pentagon teams up with Apple, Boeing to develop wearable
tech
By David Alexander | Reuters – 23 hours ago
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary
Ash Carter awarded $75 million on Friday to help a consortium of high-tech
firms and researchers develop electronic systems packed with sensors flexible
enough to be worn by soldiers or molded onto the skin of a plane.
Carter said funding for the Obama administration's newest
manufacturing institute would go to the FlexTech Alliance, a consortium of 162
companies, universities and other groups, from Boeing, Apple and Harvard, to
Advantest Akron Polymer Systems and Kalamazoo Valley Community College.
The group will work to advance the development and
manufacture of so-called flexible hybrid electronics, which can be embedded
with sensors and stretched, twisted and bent to fit aircraft or other platform
where they will be used.
"This is an emerging technology that takes advanced
flexible materials for circuits, communications, sensors and power and combines
them with thinned silicon chips to ultimately produce the next generation of
electronic products," Carter said.
He was speaking at NASA's Ames Research Center in the
heart of Silicon Valley.
The consortium, which will be managed by the U.S. Air
Force Research Laboratory, will add $90 million to the federal money. Local
governments will chip in more, boosting the group's total five-year funding
level to $171 million.
Defense officials say the rapid development of new
technologies around the globe is forcing the Pentagon to seek partnerships with
the private sector rather than developing most of its technology itself, as it once
did.
"I've been pushing the Pentagon to think outside our
five-sided box and invest in innovation here in Silicon Valley and in tech
communities across the country," Carter said.
The Flexible Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing Innovation
Hub, which will be based in San Jose, is the seventh of nine such institutes
planned by the Obama administration in an effort to revitalize the U.S.
manufacturing base.
The Pentagon established its first institute in 2012 to
help advance the development of 3-D printing.
The institute funded on Friday aims to use high-end
printing technology to create specialized, stretchable electronics that could
be embedded with sensors and worn by soldiers.
The technology also could ultimately be used to integrate
sensors directly onto the surfaces of ships or warplanes, allowing real-time
monitoring of their structural integrity.
Carter also met on Friday with the Defense Science Board
for a briefing on its latest study on how autonomous military drones and robots
should be in the future.
The department has become increasingly dependent upon
drones and other robots of varying degrees of autonomy, using them for
everything from surveillance and reconnaissance to delivery of supplies and
carrying loads for ground troops.
(Editing by David Storey and Sandra Maler)
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