DARPA Researches Avatar Surrogates

kgeiger writes "Feeling blue? DARPA is funding a program to investigate the feasibility of battlefield cyborg-surrogates: 'In its 2012 budget, DARPA has decided to pour US $7 million into the 'Avatar Project,' whose goal is the following: "develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it to act as the soldier's surrogate."' Power and bandwidth constraints aside, what could go wrong? Chinese hackers swooping in and commandeering one's army?"

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[mcgrew]

Surrogates [wikipedia.org]. Bruce Willis does more than just destroy asteroids!

Avatar had live sentient animals being grown and controlled by humans. In Surrogates, they're robots, and surrogacy starts on the battlefield.

Good SF movie, I don't know why it's so unknown.

Forever Peace

[SgtChaireBourne]

And halfway in between is Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace [thehugoawards.org]. In the novel, soldiers use mechanical body surrogates which have the bizarre side effect of linking all senses of the team members as if it were a single organism. It's a good read. We can already see, hear and launch weapons from drone platforms and this is just the early stage of remote piloting.

Re:Jaming and lag

[Baloroth]

This is DARPA. They don't even raise the question of "practicality" when they do projects like this, they just ask "can it be done at all?" These are the same people who build flying tanks. Is it practical? Almost certainly no. Is it cool and possibly practical in the future? Maybe, but we won't know until we try.

Re:Rick Santorvm - in MMXII

[idontgno]

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.

-- Poe's Law [wikipedia.org]

Re:pour US $7 million?

[wed128]

Why is this disparity between research and entertainment true????

Who's money is it? that's why.

Re:pour US $7 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like all that other BS that DARPA has funded the development of. We don't need any of that shit.

1. Internet
2. Self Navigating Autonomous cars

Re:Rick Santorvm - in MMXII

[Beelzebud]

I'll take the flawed man that is Obama, to a religious huckster like Rick Santorum any day of the week.

Re:pour US $7 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this disparity between research and entertainment true????

Who's money is it? that's why.

Wow, it took talent to fuck up "whose"...

who's = who is, not possessive whose.