Pentagon Lab Day Demonstrates Best of War Department Research

Dozens of scientists and engineers from around the War Department visited the Pentagon today. They showcased what the best and brightest minds are creating in the nation's most advanced research labs.

Some of the technology on display included bacteria that makes concrete. Other highlights were lasers that can bend to increase the lethality of energy weapons at longer distances and a robot dog equipped with 3D mapping technology.

"It's great to have our science and technology enterprise represented here," said Emil Michael, undersecretary of war for research and engineering, who opened the event. "It's one of the most exciting parts of research and engineering. I'm looking forward to seeing everything you guys have built. ... We're working on labs and making sure we're efficient and have the right authority to do more, better [and] faster."

Joseph Jewell, the assistant secretary of war for science and technology, said the department aims to improve labs moving forward.

"We're currently engaged in an assessment of the labs, a review, to kind of see what the landscape is," he said. "Although we haven't released the results yet, one of the huge outcomes is that we know that our defense labs are the link between purely academic research and technology that benefits the warfighter."

Researchers from the Air Force Research Laboratory, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Army Research Office attended lab day.

Harshil Dave, a research scientist at U.S. Naval Research Laboratory who specializes in optics, demonstrated how the right optics and mirrors can bend lasers to focus them properly and make them more lethal, even at long distances.

"Typically, if you think of a laser weapon system, if you see it in the movies, it's a big, powerful laser pointer. ... You just point it at a target, and it blows up," he said.

However, lasers can lose focus at long distances, Dave said. Anybody with a laser pointer can see that when it's pointed to the other side of the room, the laser dot gets larger and less focused. Other things like turbulence in the air can also affect focus and reduce its effectiveness. He is using optics to solve those problems.

"With beam shaping, you can sense the moving turbulence in real time, and compensate by adding a negative, basically, to the image so that you can get back to a nice, clean, spot-on target."

Dave said advanced optics increase the laser's range, enabling it to operate in more difficult environments. They also make directed-energy weapons that use lasers, making them more lethal and effective for the warfighter.

"If we're looking to put directed-energy systems out in the battlefield, we're trying to make them as effective as possible and be able to engage at longer ranges," he said. "All this stuff is important so that we can have useful area defense and things like that. With directed-energy systems, we're trying to basically enhance the capability of any systems that go onto a platform."

In addition to lasers, lab day visitors were dazzled by lots of new technology, but it was an enhanced older item that really caught their attention: a robotic dog.

Mounted on top of the robotic dog was a system that allows users to 3D map the inside of a facility and transmit that rendering to increase situational awareness.

Julian Raheema, a robotics scientist with the Navy's Reverse Engineering, Science and Technology for Obsolescence, Restoration and Evaluation Laboratory in San Diego, explained how the system, collaborative helper autonomous shipboard exploration robot, or CHASER, helps the military be more effective.

"This system is creating a map of the environment - no GPS needed - inside a ship, inside a building, whatever you want; it builds a map for you."

With hardware mounted on a robotic dog, which can go up and down stairs, the inside of a facility, ship or cave, for instance, can be mapped in 3D and then transmitted to an operator who can navigate the mapped environment using a headset.

The robotic dog can also follow a user without having to be controlled.

Raheema said that, using artificial intelligence, the system can also annotate what it sees.

"It ... not only can map it, but also annotate, 'I saw a person, I saw grenade, I saw a gun'" he said.

The system can also be preloaded with a mission set. So even if communications fail, the system will continue to operate independently.

Michael S. Carter, a biomaterial research scientist with the Air Force Research Laboratory, displayed what looked like concrete, but it was made by using biological materials applied to sand.

The biologically produced bacteria are grown in the U.S. and preserved as powder, which can then be mixed and sprayed directly onto a surface.

Carter said they are embedding that bacteria into sand, like a beach, along with some additional chemicals, to form calcium carbonite, hardening the surface to drive vehicles over it. He noted that once the technology is improved, more uses can be envisioned.

"I think we can rapidly take beachheads and convert them into drivable surfaces for things like [joint logistics over the shore]," he said. "Runways [are] an obvious one, airfields in general, but the supporting structure around it - parking lots, roadways, landing zones - all are target applications."