DARPA Researches Avatar Surrogates 159
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?"
pour US $7 million? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that $7 million isn't a lot of money for you and me, but for the US government it is a rounding error.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, $7 Million is about one eye drop's worth of money to the US Government.
Re:pour US $7 million? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Less than a quarter of a billion dollars, actually.
That doesn't affect your point, though.
Re: (Score:3)
The movie "Avatar" costed half a billion dollars - 7 millions seems too low a budget to make it real.
it would give you some change from a Lee Majors [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
That was the mid '70s.
Inflation adjusted, Lee Majors is the Slightly-Over-20-Million-Dollar-Man.
Re:pour US $7 million? (Score:4, Informative)
Why is this disparity between research and entertainment true????
Who's money is it? that's why.
Re: (Score:2)
"Who has" or "Who is"? You mean, whose. :P
Re:pour US $7 million? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this disparity between research and entertainment true????
How is making a movie and R&D'ing a technology Apples to Apples enough for this to be worthy of so many question marks?
Re: (Score:2)
How is making a movie and R&D'ing a technology Apples to Apples enough for this to be worthy of so many question marks?
No. But in this case, the difference is enough to warrant the question marks: it *should* cost a lot less to simply develop a mockup of how something should work than to actually build that tool.
Now, Avatar did involve developing a few new technologies for the entertainment industry, but the point stands: if Avatar cost a quarter of a billion dollars to make, actually building the technology that Avatar is describing should cost more, shouldn't it? $7 million is a teacup in the ocean.
That being said, I don'
Re: (Score:3)
Avatar didn't even build a mockup of the technology in any meaningful sense. What it did was make a movie, part of whose premise was that the technology existed. There is no reason to expect that the cost of the cinematic production should have any relationship of any kind to the cost of the technology.
Re: (Score:2)
if Avatar cost a quarter of a billion dollars to make, actually building the technology that Avatar is describing should cost more, shouldn't it?
No. Those are two very different projects with two very different sets of specs. One technology wasn't developed on Avatar, it was more like 6. All those pieces had to be scaled up so that tens-to-hundreds of people could work with it to meet the deadline. The goal was to deliver two and a half hours of photo-real CG (with a whole slew of bullet points) in stereo. Avatar had to develop working tools for massive numbers of people to use. It's not even clear from this article that DARPA is even delive
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It's an investigation of feasibility. Not an actual development project. 7.000.000 USD is quite a lot for something like that.
Re: (Score:2)
"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."
We have that now, it's called a robot. Are robots feasible? Yes. Can I have $7,000,000 now?
Re: (Score:2)
Feasibility of such interfaces and algorithms in relation to using human brain to control a robot. Not robots themselves.
There is some legwork already done on this in prosthetics, but other then that, it should be fairly virginal territory.
Re: (Score:2)
We have that now, it's called a robot. Are robots feasible? Yes. Can I have $7,000,000 now?
I'm going to guess they'll have a long list of problematic questions requiring well-researched answers that goes well beyond your intuitional response of, "yea someone could do it".
Because if the answer were simply "yes", there's lots more follow-on money a-comin' for development, and nobody wants to spend that on a doomed project.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Bullshit project? Are you trolling, on crack, or just stupid? This is the kind of research that saves soldiers' lives, plus there will certainly be non-military applications down the road.
Re: (Score:2)
we should be working to put more people on the ground in wars, not less. otherwise more civilians will die as war becomes easier to start. look at how armed drones in the air force has made them more gung ho..
Re: (Score:2)
Rick Santorvm - in MMXII (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...
*GASP*
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Thanks for the best laugh of the week. You should take back your meds.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, it's either well-thought-out satire, or... (shudder) ... not.
Since it does a pretty thorough job of touching on all the so-called "conservative" talking points, complete with contradictory positions (hard to accomplish without a clear head and an eye on the news), I'm thinking there are no meds involved.
Re: (Score:2)
poes law maybe?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
raising taxes on those of us who are successful
Something you'll never have to worry about from down in Mommy and Daddy's basement, eh?
Re:Rick Santorvm - in MMXII (Score:5, Funny)
He will set the country on the path to freedom from religious persecution and return us to our rightful place in God's plan. Eliminate the government and all those who stand in the way of worship of our rightful, true Ruler. The crimes that are performed in the name of our current governmental system, including but not limited to murder of innocent children, forcing citizens to pay for products they don't want, driving our society into unrecoverable debt that our children (if they aren't aborted) will never be able to repay, placing women in harms' way and outside of the role evolution has trained them for as mother and caregiver, stifling business under the guise and heavy hand of global warming, raising taxes on those of us who are successful, teaching our precious children ridiculous theories that men were once apes and spontaneously changed into what we are today, and attempting to diverge from the Christian principles that our forefathers observed and that this country was founded upon. We need to return to His holy way, and remove the heathens from our path, if necessary, by force. It's time to stopping giving away our children's inheritance to lazy jobless people and Godless welfare cases. It's time we took back our economy and this country.
Who would have thought Noam Chomsky would one day post on Slashdot
Re:Rick Santorvm - in MMXII (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Rick Santorvm - in MMXII (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
then you are a flat out id10t.
Did you cat walk on your keyboard or am I supposed to construe that's how you think "cool kids" talk nowadays?
Re:Rick Santorvm - in MMXII (Score:5, Informative)
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]
Not Avatar (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Forever Peace (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I prefer the Wargs from Westeros- not only could they take over the bodies of other animals- some of them can actually control other people.
Imagine if our soldiers could go to sleep and wake up in expendable human bodies when going to battle. We could get our soldiers to take over French soldiers and march them into military victory over Germany.
Re: (Score:1)
Avatar the word (not the movie) means "An incarnation, embodiment, or manifestation of a person or idea", so I think the name is perfectly well chosen. The robot body manifests the controller in a different place. It is the right word to choose regardless of scifi book or movie titles.
Re: (Score:2)
If it were avatar the word and not Avatar the movie it wouldn't be capitalized and italicised.
Re: (Score:2)
Or try the "soldier boys" in "The Forever Peace", by Joe Haldeman. Some of the book is about the psychological disconnection of being a semi-immune actor on the battlefield, some about getting your robot "killed" out from under you while "fully immersed." I was going to add a bit more information, but it's too much of a spoiler.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The movie you linked on imdb is the same movie I linked at wikipedia. Surrogates, Bruce Willis. And yes, it is older than Avatar but not as well known.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed, I'm surprised this movie isn't better known.
Re: (Score:2)
mcgrew pointed out:
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.
Mmm ... to me, Surrogates absolutely reeked of Keith Laumer's novelette "The Bodybuilders". The plot differed, but the basic meme - people use mechanical surrogates for social interaction, so they can be as handsome/beautiful, and in as good apparent shape as they'd like to be in meatspace - is a straightforward copy, as is Willis's reaction when he's forced to confront external reality in his own, very vulnerable, biological body.
I always wondered why his estate didn't sue, but I guess t
Re: (Score:2)
That was my first thought when I first read this story on another site.
Relevant scene is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79JDeCcXGtw [youtube.com]
Jaming and lag (Score:2, Interesting)
1. any kind of lag or areas with a poor signal may not work to well even more so if the link need to go over a few Satellites.
2. You don't need to hack them just jam them and they can be come useless
Re:Jaming and lag (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Right, they start somewhere insane and then dial it down. The applications are immediate.
Will it be practical for combat in the next 20 years? Probably not. But it could be used in EOD (Explosives and Ordinance Disposal) where you would have the advantage of human dexterity in disabling a bomb without having to risk an actual person. (They already use small robots as is.) It could also be useful in firefighting situations - a tethered "avatar" robot could go far closer to a fire and fight it (or inside a bu
Re: (Score:2)
China not a problem (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
The fact that DARPA is budgeting $7 million on research to "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" is proof that Chinese human/surrogate interface manufacturers have already infiltrated DARPA's budgeting systems.
Here's an idea. (Score:1)
You've got millions of people ages 10-whatever that can play fps games. How about a computer screen, keyboard and mouse interface. I'll happily take a portion of that 7 million now. Just forget that the bipedal robot part doesn't actually work yet.
Are you kidding me? (Score:1)
What a massive waste of money. We have people starving in the world (yes even in the US) and they throw 7M at this crap?
Re: (Score:2)
Great... (Score:1)
How could this possibly backfire?
Not just WAR but also SPACE (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a submission I sent a few days ago about humanoid television-robots making the first handshake in space (on the ISS).
wisebabo writes
"As long as we are still in debt to the Chinese and can't afford an ambitious space program, we should be developing THESE (humanoid telerobots). Just get the astronaut NEAR the Moon or Mars (or someday Titan!) and operate these without that stupid speed-of-light time delay. A huge proportion of the weight and complexity of going to these places is that last 100 miles so while times are lean this is the way to go.
Maybe James Cameron can be persuaded to do a pre-quel of Avatar, unfortunately I don't think he'll find a planet full of sexy tele-robots!"
Link to Original Source
Re: (Score:2)
with the moon, it could probably work directly from Earth. make it smart enough to move around and avoid falling rocks etc, and have someone give it short term goals ("hammer that nail", "reorient that antenna", etc).
even from orbit there would be some delay (you need to send everything through a satellite anyway since you're on the other side of the planet half the time), so just do it from Earth.
Re: (Score:2)
The issue is "telepresence" requires more of a real-time feed, IMHO, than what you'll get even earth-to-moon.
For example, "avoid falling rocks." Figure that it takes a radio signal 1.25 seconds to get from the Earth to the Moon. So you're watching a rock falling towards you. What you're seeing was 1.25 seconds ago. So you immediately jump to the right to avoid it. By the time the robot gets the signal to jump to the right, it's been another 1.25 seconds. So assuming your robot was just standing there,
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, as I mentioned later in my other post "Stupid auto-correct", does the moon's 1/6th gravity help?
I mean does it give you six times longer to react so that the 2.5 seconds you point out "feels" more like .32 seconds?
Of course this only is true because of the moon's weaker gravity (and it won't help for any non-gravity related motion, like driving into a wall) but maybe that's good enough.
Sounds like a good research topic that could be easily(?) done in simulation!
Re: (Score:2)
I did mention that you should make it smart enough to avoid falling rocks on its own. I think that can already be done. as far as I know, there are tiny robots playing football, so they can do a lot of this fast reflex stuff on their own.
Re: (Score:2)
I did mention that you should make it smart enough to avoid falling rocks on its own.
Where is the dividing line between "telepresence" and "remote control"?
I would submit that telepresence is where the "robot" (for lack of better term) is completely and utterly controlled by you--the robot is merely a collection of sensors that are fed to you. So, for example, if the robot touches something hot, it will communicate it to you by applying heat to your fingers and you will pull back your hand. The robot will not decide for itself that what it touched is hot and pull back the hand for you.
Now
Re: (Score:2)
I think they meant that the robot would be pre-programmed to automatically avoid falling rocks or deal with other anticipated emergency situations that require an immediate response not possible with the Earth-Moon time delay.
Think of it as a reflex for robots - the same way as when I touch something hot with my hand I don't have to think "move my hand away from that" because my nervous system can handle that for me.
Stupid auto-correct (Score:2)
I meant "telepresence" not television!
Also the sub-poster makes a good point. While an astronaut in orbit around the MOON (not earth) would be much closer, he would still have to go through a lunar relay at least half the time. In any case, compared with the cost of just running it from a nice beach resort (okay lab) on earth, the 1-1/2 second time delay seems acceptable.
It's helped out by the moons 1/6 gee. So if you drop something, you have six times longer to react!
What can go wrong... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that I am advocating soldiers dying per se, but if a cause is not worth dying for, then why is it worth going to war for in the first place? If one is prepared to kill their fellow man for whatever cause they might believe in, however true, and however noble, and however right, but they themselves are not prepared to die in the name of that same cause, then their so-called virtuous beliefs are nothing but hollow claims.
Nothing of any real worth or value has ever been achieved without making some sacrifice... and it is the virtue of the people who *have* made such sacrifices that gives us that much more a profound appreciation for the victory that was gained by it.
Take that away, and war becomes just a pointless exercise in killing... without purpose, and maybe even without end.
This is a bad idea.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Nobody wins a war by dying for their country. You win a war by making the OTHER sob die for HIS country.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I suspect you're trying to make a moral point. If this is so, you're both right (or at least, I agree) and completely beside the point.
In practice, the only cost considered in waging war is the cost to "the good guys". If you can inflict 5000 casualties on the enemy (and, maybe, some of their non-combatants as well), without suffering any casualties of your own, that's zero casualties. The other side doesn't count, except as targets. If they don't want to die, they can surrender. Maybe. Or flee. Maybe.
Reall
Re: (Score:2)
You miss the point. If a war isn't worth putting your ass on the line for, it's also not worth killing other people for.
You must be new to this planet.
-AI
Re: (Score:1)
Nobody wins a war by dying for their country. You win a war by making the OTHER sob die for HIS country.
Classic Gen. George S. Patton, there!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You have similar situations today with Drone attacks, not to mention the cruise missile strikes against "terrorist targets" in the 1990s.
Re: (Score:2)
Take that away, and war becomes just a pointless exercise in killing... without purpose, and maybe even without end.
This is a bad idea.
The argument could be made that this is already the case, with "expendable" soldiers acting as the avatars for politicians or other unscrupulous sorts.
Re: (Score:2)
The argument could be made that this is already the case, with "expendable" soldiers acting as the avatars for politicians or other unscrupulous sorts.
To a certain extent, yes. But human lives still have value, if not to the politicians, to the military leaders calling the shots, and to the people who have to read about it in the paper.
Consider: a little shy of 4,500 US soldiers have died in Iraq since hostilities began in 2003, and nearly 33,000 have been wounded. Stalin wrote that 1,000 deaths is a tragedy, 1,000,000 is a statistic, and the same holds true for this conflict: 4,500 dead is a *lot*, but it's a number most of us can wrap our heads around,
Re: (Score:3)
That sort of thinking (noble combat, laying your life on the line for something you believe in) is what got hundreds of thousands of young men to go to their deaths in the trenches in WWI. War is just one extreme of the application of force to achieve your group's desires -- slaughtering of animals and unfortunate native populations which get in the way is the other extreme. We usually have called them wars when the protagonists were equally enough matched to make it risky for both sides but in the histor
Re:What can go wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're assuming that the nature and meaning of "war" wouldn't undergo a fundamental shift if people weren't dying during it.
Lots of things are, essentially, "war" where people don't die. Apple and Samsung are engaged in a "war" against each other - they're both hoping to take something from the other by coercion, even if that isn't physical coercion.
Being able to "wage war" where stuff, rather than people, die would be huge. I'd much rather throw away stuff than people any day.
Also, I dispute entirely your belief that somehow we have a more profound appreciation for things that people have died for. In fact, I dare say that the fact that when people die in wars and other people use it for cheap political theater shows just how shallow the "appreciation" is.
Look, for example, at the whole "support our troops" thing as it happened with Iraq and Afghanistan: Some people used the deaths of troops to support a kind of "sunk cost" fallacy about dead soldiers, other people used it to say that their political opponents were politically bankrupt, other people used it as a club to beat up those they felt weren't appropriately patriotic, others used it to profit from selling shitty yellow ribbon magnets and Chinese-made American flags, and on and on.
Yet, when it comes to doing things that *actually* matter - taking care of injured veterans and helping their families - it's just *crickets* *crickets* when these men and women come home and need some help because of what they've left "over there." Veterans make up a disproportionate number of homeless - I dare say that if we had a "more profound appreciation" for the sacrifices made in war that wouldn't be the case because we wouldn't, as a society *let* it be the case.
Re: (Score:2)
If we reduce the relative risk of going to war, we remove the reasons not to. "Worth" takes on a whole new meaning, when you don't have as much to lose.
Re: (Score:2)
He didn't say it in so many words, but yeah according to his logic Obama is also a coward.
But I think he's right! I think the world would be a better place if the person starting a war (i.e. head of state) had to personally lead the army into battle and actually fight. Like the emperors of old.
Can you imagine W. or Obama riding in a Humvee, firing M-4s at insurgents and rallying the troops like Caesar? Neither can I. These cowards would be pacifists for life.
Negative possibilities (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
holy fucking crap. (Score:5, Funny)
with the kind of presidents the USA churns out, is "it could be hacked" *really* the first thing that comes to mind when you ponder what could go wrong? how about this, it might NOT get hacked, and offer even more potential to murder and maim even more people with even less inhibitions, politically as well as on the level of individual soldiers? we had nintendo pilots for a long time. now there'll be nintendo grunts. fucking great. and the princess is STILL in another castle.
but oh noes, the chinese [youtube.com]. you are so lost.
Re: (Score:2)
I am so fascinated by fantasizing about you fantasizing about that, I can hardly put it in words. yeah folks, let's just consider how many things in China just explode, or fall apart for no reason, and how often! I completely forgot about that. In the USA only democracy and the social system fall apart and explode, but look at those bags of rice go. and should China ever amount to anything, there's still plenty of f
Re: (Score:2)
haha, name one comment I made about americans... good thing you're not full of shit, right?
Machines can be used against you (Score:3)
bi-pedal??? (Score:3)
War as a video game (Score:4, Insightful)
If they continue down this path they will mostly just turn war into a big video game. All the real people will be locked up in a bunker somewhere controlling their avatars and such.
So, then the question becomes this: Why not just settle disputes by actually playing video games. You lose at starcraft, you lose your country. Seems like the natural progression...
Re: (Score:2)
A Taste of Armageddon (Score:1)
If they continue down this path they will mostly just turn war into a big video game. All the real people will be locked up in a bunker somewhere controlling their avatars and such. So, then the question becomes this: Why not just settle disputes by actually playing video games. You lose at starcraft, you lose your country. Seems like the natural progression.
As foreshadowed by a ST:TOS episode [memory-alpha.org].
star trek tos had a episode like that that (Score:3)
star trek tos had a episode like that that with computers running a VR war with real death chambers that people just went into and they did that as it's was better then useing real weapons.
Re: (Score:2)
"Why not just settle disputes by actually playing video games"
Already done, it's called Congress: kids arguing with on another, collecting credits ($$$), having re-dos (reelection), cheating, and playing mind games.
If everyone is remotely fighting, instead of building up this huge infrastructure: wouldn't it be easier to just pick up the d*mn phone and settle it?
Re: (Score:3)
Eventually Jim Kirk will come along and destroy the computers that run the war. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
That would require a kind of gentlemen's agreement similar to a "fight of the two champions" in lieu of a a battle between two armies. That sort of civilized behavior never really caught on when the stakes are high enough. IIRC Saddam Hussein offered the same to George W. Bush in 2003, but somehow the US didn't accept this offer.
While you celebrate your victory in your bunker, the "defeated" side may have just cut off the antenna and sealed the entrance to your bunker. Who's a winner then?
wireless technology (Score:2)
Can't defy the laws of physics people--this will never work from a remote aspect (think latency).
The Gundam [wikipedia.org] approach is the way to go.
Re: (Score:2)
I think... (Score:2)
I have seen this movie. Or maybe this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woxgr_GtFnU [youtube.com]
hasn't DARPA seen Episode 1? (Score:2)
one EMF and BAM! no communication to any of your bipedal droids.