Following requests from the R&D community, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has now published an open source catalog containing all the code and publications related to its research. The endeavor, the government agency states, is to provide government investments with a flexible technology base.

"Making our open source catalog available increases the number of experts who can help quickly develop relevant software for the government," said Chris White, DARPA program manager in an agency press release. "Our hope is that the computer science community will test and evaluate elements of our software and afterward adopt them as either standalone offerings or as components of their products."

The open source catalog can be found at https://go.usa.gov/BDhY, and contains software toolkits and peer-reviewed publications from the XDATA program in the agency's Information Innovation Office (I2O), one six main offices. At launch, the catalog contains data from over 60 projects, and DARPA states that it will expand the publicly available information in the future, including data from the Broad Operational Language Translation and Visual Media Reasoning programs.

DARPA is an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense and was created in 1958 as a response to the surprise launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 satellite a year earlier. While the primary goal of DARPA has always been to prevent "technological surprise" while simultaneously developing technologies to surprise opponents, the agency's goals have grown larger in scope. Over the past decades, DARPA efforts have helped create some of the most profound technological innovations, including the Internet and GPS.

The data DARPA is making open source is just one sliver of the agency's commitments. Most of the open source catalog's information pertains to computer science-related research, but DARPA has its fingers in plenty of other pots of honey as well.

DARPA's Scope

For starters, we have the Cheetah robot. Developed by Boston Dynamics (now owned by Google), and funded by DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation program, the Cheetah is the fastest legged robot in the world. Capable of hitting a top speed of over 29 miles per hour, the Cheetah is one example of DARPA's foray into robotics. DARPA funds have also helped Boston Dynamics develop the BigDog, a rough terrain robot, and the Sand Flea, a tiny RC-like robot that can jump 30 feet in the air.

It doesn't just stop there, however. DARPA's research goes further, touching upon things like missiles filled with lava, improved surveillance systems, and, naturally, super soldiers. DARPA also hosts the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a 27-month long competition during which DARPA hopes to bring forth new technologies and robots that could aid humans in disaster scenarios with improved mobility and awareness. If that's not enough, DARPA recently awarded IBM $3.4 million to develop self-destructing electronic chips. The list goes on, but one thing is clear, DARPA's list of projects range from the practical, to helpful, to scary, and surreal.