We are all now quite familiar with the whole Avatar made popular in the James Cameron movie and we can be pretty sure that while controlling aliens this way isn’t going to happen anytime soon that doesn’t mean that the military wouldn’t love a more mechanical version of the idea.
So it shouldn’t come as any surprise either that when DARPA’s budget of $2.8 billion for 2013 was announced that they have earmarked some $7 mill.ion of that money for a project called “Avatar”. Unlike the movie however this isn’t about aliens but rather controlling robots.
Or as DARPA puts it
According the agency, “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.”
These robots should be smart and agile enough to do the dirty work of war, Darpa notes. That includes the “room clearing, sentry control [and] combat casualty recovery.” And all at the bidding of their human partner.
This of course should be consider the natural evolution in the agency’s interest in all things drone and robotic as we have seen with the now famous video of their “AlphaDog” robotic dog slash pack animal.
There is apparently going to be a lot of money spent on all things laserish as well, both offensive and defensive so it would seem that DARPA is still living up to its reputation as the country’s foremost dreamer of all things cool and science fiction.
