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. 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. 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: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