Ray Baughman, director of the University of Texas' NanoTech Institute, sees
a time when military leaders will send robots into battle. "They could fight
ahead of American soldiers, take a bullet for American soldiers, and then, after
giving them a shot of alcohol or diesel fuel, will fight on."
Baughman is one of thousands of research scientists working at academic laboratories across the nation developing military-funded gadgets and systems that often end up becoming mainstream business and consumer technologies.
"Things like the Internet, GPS navigation devices, and even the Hummer," says William Ostrove, an aerospace and defense analyst at technology research firm Forecast International. With the number of corporate military R&D labs dwindling, the government is increasingly relying on university research programs to develop new and innovative ways of fighting wars. "Military technology research has become a grants-driven process," says Ostrove.
Fed by cash from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and numerous other government agencies, university researchers toil on projects covering the full spectrum of military needs, including health, security, decision support, communications, transportation, and tactical innovations.
The government's role in sponsoring academic military research began in the days of the Manhattan Project and continues to this day, says M. Mitchell Waldrop, an NSF spokesman. "In a sense, we're sort of a military application ourselves," says Waldrop, referring to the NSF's launch in 1950 as part of the government's plan to boost scientific research at the start of the Cold War.
Along with government money, many labs rely on funding from corporate partners. Businesses are increasingly turning to academic labs—and their skilled researchers—to develop technologies that can be sold to the government and, later on, to consumers and businesses. In fact, Ostrove says a growing number of businesses are finding it more cost effective to farm out specific projects to appropriate university labs than to conduct their own R&D.
"There are, for example, numerous projects focusing on remote sensing—seeing
and hearing what the enemy is doing," he says. "This is one of many research
areas with potential military and civilian security applications, and that's
why there's a great deal of government and private funding."
MUSCLE BUILDER
Baughman is developing artificial muscles that are up to 100 times stronger
than their natural counterparts. He launched the project after a DARPA representative
visiting the lab mentioned the need for powerful actuators that would allow
the development of autonomous humanoid robots capable of protecting people in
dangerous situations. Such a technology also could be used to create exoskeletons
that provide superhuman strength to soldiers, astronauts, and firefighters,
as well as artificial limbs that act like the real thing.
Using funds from DARPA, the U.S. Air Force, and other organizations, Baughman
led a research team that developed two different types of muscles that convert
chemical energy into mechanical energy, like natural muscles. Both muscle types
simultaneously function as muscles and fuel cells, eliminating the need for
heavy batteries.
In one muscle type, a catalyst-containing carbon nanotube electrode is used
as a fuel cell to convert chemical energy into electrical energy, as a supercapacitor
to store energy, and as a muscle to transform electrical energy into mechanical
energy. In the other type of artificial muscle, which is more powerful, a catalytic
reaction converts the fuel's chemical energy into heat. The resulting temperature
increase in the "shorted fuel-cell muscle" contracts a shape-memory metal muscle
wire. Subsequent cooling completes the work cycle by expanding the muscle (Fig.
1).
The shorted fuel-cell muscle may be especially easy to deploy in robotic devices, since it uses commercially available shape-memory wires that are then coated with a nanoparticle catalyst, says Baughman. The major challenges have been in attaching the catalyst to the shape-memory wire to provide long muscle lifetimes and in controlling the muscle actuation rate and stroke, he adds.
Yet Baughman is optimistic that the research will soon produce real-world products. He says the first practical applications, such as a Braille display that's powered by tiny artificial muscles, should begin arriving in less than three years. "More advanced applications, such as autonomous robots and artificial hearts, will take a bit longer," he says.