RoboticsPentagon explores mind-controlled battle robots
Taking a page from the popular movie Avatar, the military’s advanced research arm DARPA is seeking to develop technology that would allow troops to remotely inhabit the bodies of mechanical androids on the battlefield
Honda has been developing a mind-controlled robot // Source: derstandard.at
Taking a page from the popular movie Avatar, the military’s advanced research arm DARPA is seeking to develop technology that would allow troops to remotely inhabit the bodies of mechanical androids on the battlefield.
In the agency’s latest budget, it has set aside $7 million for project “Avatar.” Danger Room reports that according to 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.”
Ultimately DARPA hopes to create robots that are smart and agile enough of to accomplish all of the tasks people can including“room clearing, sentry control, [and] combat casualty recovery.”
The agency did not go into specifics, but did note that Project Avatar is based on “key advancements in telepresence and remote operation of a ground system.” Additionally, DARPA noted that it has already funded successful experiments on controlling robots with chips implanted in brains.
This is not the agency’s first foray into advanced humanoid robots. Researchers there are already at work on the autonomous life-like Petman, which mimics a soldier’s body, and AlphaDog a headless dog-like robot designed to carry gear into combat.
