I do not know if this is quite
within reach yet although it is surely in our future much sooner than
later. Far more certain are going to be
the development of warplanes flown from a remote site. Why risk lives in order to underuse the
capabilities of hardware in the first place?
When we reach that capacity in
ground hardware and we have surely reached it with tanks and other military
vehicles. Then it is time to see if an organic connection can be built that
allows the creation of combat avatars.
The first problem that needs to
be better addressed is 360 viewing of the environment. We cannot do it so well right now yet it is
the one thing that is needed. It
involves making one’s peripheral vision operate at a full 360 less the frontal
focus. We know we have peripheral vision;
it needs to be upgraded and expanded.
I would also like to see our
eyesight expanded across a much wider part of the spectrum even if it has to be
done selectively. It really helps to
know something is not a plant.
Compared to that, connecting our
nerves indirectly to servos seems easy, but it is not.
Project Avatar: U.S.
By DAMIEN
GAYLE
Last updated at 12:40 PM on 17th February 2012
The U.S.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon's
hi-tech research arm, has earmarked $7million for research into the project,
nicknamed Avatar.
The ultimate goal of the project sounds, bizarrely, much like the
fantastical plot of the the film of the same name.
In the James Cameron movie, set far in the future, human soldiers use
mind control to inhabit the bodies of human alien hybrids as they carry out a
war against the inhabitants of a distant world.
According to the Darpa's 2013 budget: 'The Avatar program will 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.'
The report, released this week and seen by wired.com, says
the remote controlled androids will be capable of doing everything that a human
soldier can.
They should be able to perform all the duties expected of a human
soldier, including 'room clearing, sentry control [and] combat casualty
recovery,' all via remote control.
The means in which this man-machine mind-meld are to be achieved are
unclear, but Darpa's description of the project notes 'key advancements in
telepresence and remote operation of a ground system'.
The agency has reportedly already funded successful attempts to control
robots with thought - albeit using monkeys - raising the terrifying prospect
that wars may in the future be fought by machine proxy.
The initiative seems like the next logical step in the U.S.
Remote-controlled drones have, controversially, been in use for some
time, and have been a key, if sometimes clumsy, weapon in the U.S.
At ground level, the agency has also investigated autonomous, lifelike
robots, including headless humanoid Petman, and AlphaDog, a four legged machine
designed to carry equipment.
Last week Darpa released a new video of AlphaDog and noted that they
wanted the machine to interact with soldiers in a way similar to the
relationship between a trained animal and its handler.
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