The most important three are:
Robot dogs
The nightmare-inducing BigDog robot could run at 6mph, climb 35 degree slopes and carry 150kg loads. But the $32m DARPA funded four-legged dogbot would never fulfil its creators’ dreams of becoming a baggage mule for troops on the battlefield.
The company behind BigDog, Boston Dynamics, was later sold to Google (which then sold it onto Softbank). Boston Dynamics has also created a human that can walk and climb through rough terrain using its hands and feet and a SpotMini dog which can open doors.
Driverless cars
In 2004, Darpa invited a group of participants, largely from American universities, to develop a car that could drive itself 150 miles across the Mojave desert, an experiment seen as the start of the current explosion in driverless car research.
Engineers on the project included Chris Urmson, Sebastian Thrun and Anthony Levandowski, who would go on to lead work on Google’s driverless car unit, which has since been spun out as a separate company called Waymo.
The B-2 stealth bomber
Because of its endlessly curving shape, its weird radar-absorbing skin and its tight hermetically sealed innards, the B-2, despite its 172-foot wingspan, reads to radar systems as being about 1.1 square feet. Initially top secret, it ended up being revealed to the public by President Jimmy Carter.
