DARPA investing in "Avatar" robot surrogates for US soldiers

(Videos in some links)

DARPA's robot "Avatars"

Strange as it may sound, DARPA is years above other nations when it comes to future technologies, as I can personally attest. One of their latest projects involves using robots to assist, defend, and/or fight in place of our soldiers. The following article explains in further detail: Pentagon’s Project ‘Avatar’: Same as the Movie, but With Robots

After research and inquiries, the following company was determined to be the designers working with DARPA on this research. Boston Dynamic's Petman Future designs will integrate soldier mind-controlling capabilities.


Currrent DARPA Advanced Technology Warfare Projects:

The previous project only scratch the surface. Here's a further brief rundown of what else is to come.

• Speaking of robots in warfare, just earlier this same month, DARPA released a video of their robodog as well as information regarding the Snakebot.

• Innovative projects like a cyber-defense computing cloud that when it's attacked, will shut down and repair it's own damaged code by itself.

• Augmented Reality (HUD) Eye Contacts

• Scanners that allow military units to actually see into underground layers using sensor technologies from seismic, electromagnetic, conductivity, and resistivity, all the way even to scanning by using multi/hyperspectral, and gravity/gravity gradient sensors. (Yes, we do have the technology, and yes, we can actually measure gravity fields now.)

• Precise kinetic and non-kinetic weapons with advance munitions and system integration of electromagnetics, plasma, atmospherics, acoustics, intelligent projectiles, and variable yield capabilities.

• A "continuously" launching series of rapid and persistent space craft

• Troop camouflage capable of real-time blending in of environment

• A broad spectrum of newer, more powerful, compact, high-energy lasers installed onto tactical vehicles- ground, sea, or air

• Atom-sized sensors as well as other various quantum entanglement projects

• Last but not least, we are creating a living foundry. This is a living factory that will solve challenges associated with production of new materials, novel capabilities, fuels and medicines.

There are so many more but I'll leave it at that for now. If this thread garners enough interest I will list further Defense projects largely unknown by the public.

Why can't we use this project to replace the Robonaut they experimented with in space?

Why do we have to use robots to fight wars? That eliminates the risk of human lives...and makes us that much more willing to jump into confrontations.

Using robotic soldiers in wars is the worst idea they could possibly bring to life (excepting a nuclear bomb capable of leveling a country the size of England).

Why? WHY?!?! Technology should be used for peace and exploration, not destroying each other...

Just...why?

reply to post by Starchild23

Because unfortunately someone decided that war and it's profits were better than peaceful things. Sad world ain't it? The dog robot looks kinda scary but one well aimed RPG should take care of it, or a mine.
ETA Possibly high-tech warfare will become the order of the day. Electro-magnetic (inexpert terms) jamming devices? Fry the circuits from a distance somehow.

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
reply to post by Starchild23

 

Because unfortunately someone decided that war and it's profits were better than peaceful things. Sad world ain't it? The dog robot looks kinda scary but one well aimed RPG should take care of it, or a mine.

Not to mention that robots aren't the quietest things in existence.

Additionally, a well-placed EMP device would effectively shut down the whole thing.

reply to post by Starchild23

We're on the same page.

Originally posted by Starchild23
Why can't we use this project to replace the Robonaut they experimented with in space?

Why do we have to use robots to fight wars? That eliminates the risk of human lives...and makes us that much more willing to jump into confrontations.

Using robotic soldiers in wars is the worst idea they could possibly bring to life (excepting a nuclear bomb capable of leveling a country the size of England).

Why? WHY?!?! Technology should be used for peace and exploration, not destroying each other...

Just...why?

Cause we are a stupid species.

U

Originally posted by Starchild23
Additionally, a well-placed EMP device would effectively shut down the whole thing.

It would be shielded quite well from this, as well as various weather conditions.
Trust me, if you can think of a problem that might occur during operation, DARPA's researchers and inventors certainly will have too. Thought of that particular, and a hundred other possible reasons-for-system-failure-type scenarios. Safe to say that most discrepancies are thoroughly covered.

reply to post by USarmyFL

Cause we are a stupid species.

I lol'ed.

Perfectly succinct and accurate summary of our current intellectual condition, as is reflected in our technological investments and foreign endeavors.

Originally posted by SoulVisions

Originally posted by Starchild23
Additionally, a well-placed EMP device would effectively shut down the whole thing.

It would be shielded quite well from this, as well as various weather conditions.
Trust me, if you can think of a problem that might occur during operation, DARPA's researchers and inventors certainly will have too. Thought of that particular, and a hundred other possible reasons-for-system-failure-type scenarios. Safe to say that most discrepancies are thoroughly covered.

edit on 1-3-2012 by SoulVisions because: (no reason given)

I love how they put so much thought into creating a weapon of autonomous destruction, but won't fund projects for furthering space exploration.

Gotta love them American priorities.

Because, if you can't invoke fear then you won't have power.
If you don't have power then you won't have respect.
If you don't have respect then you won't have money.
If you don't have money then you can't acquire technology.
If you don't have technology then you can't create weapons.
If you don't have weapons then you can't invoke fear.
And if you can't invoke fear then you won't have power...

reply to post by SoulVisions


why don't we spent the money they are wasting on this and other "Defence" projects, and just use it to feed, clothe and educate the world?

Why compare this to some stupid Hollywood movie?

Ghost in the Shell had way more depth in the concept of cyber-psychic augmentation, transfering mental dimensions digitally into robots (thus making them cyborgs). The surrogates ranged from sex dolls to highly armed cyborg soldiers, to even tanks and attack helicoptors. Could you even imagine implanting your mind into a tank, being one with it? GITS makes Avatar look like a fairybook.

[nothing personal against the OP, I just don't like the popular take on this technology]

reply to post by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi


Curious, just noticed you started a new thread containing the information already posted here.
Workin' on that star count, hm?

Originally posted by SoulVisions
reply to post by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

 

Curious, just noticed you started a new thread containing the information already posted here.
Workin' on that star count, hm?

Um, no, not this thread.

The thread that I did post today already had a similar thread posted in the "New World Order" forum. Unfortunately, I thought the information was too important to post in such a dubious forum, so I posted another one in a more credible place. Is there a problem with that?

'Cast about linking up human brains to sensory and thought input to computers.

hw.libsyn.com... 0744064&hwt=9d80031cb07072250728c736212b5a9a

One of the things that always bugged me. The whole avatar thing, were already avatars of our conscious and souls as it stands, and everything is defined and guided by that, our fleshy bodies. The thing is all those machines are already alive, they just are not under the same laws as us, or better yet not on the same wavelengths.

The two can not really mutually exist on the same wavelength only side by side, or if they can it is not something that blends together well. In fact it seems to blend like oil and water blend, one always floats on top of the other, always aloft, apart, never quite there even when right in your face.

But ya ghost in the shell pretty much did it and once again life is catching up to art. The whole cyborgs, human conscious in metal tanks, in cyberspace, in all kind of digital and metal constructs, were as they could just basically upload there whole psyche, there whole persona, and the everything that a person is, into different bodies and digital forms.

Which if you think about it really it can not just be done like that, because a conscious is a always flowing river, never the same from one moment to another, its kind of an impossibility not only because it will kill individuality but because anybody that tries it they just became copy and paste programs and nothing more. Defined by what shell they inhabit to that exact limit that they inhabit, they do really become a ghost in a shell.

And as they get uploaded into different host bodies, the bodies that they got uploaded into are what they conform to in its entire makeup, and its what they become. So really how can a man, be a tank? its whole makeup its whole psyche, and all that it makes it will not and can not be the same, there is a whole world of difference between some of the stuff on that show and what there talking about here. This stuff is just puppets, basically just a new way to remote control puppets, but to transfer your whole makeup into a metal body that is a whole different ball game.

And it changes everything, I mean look what the digital age, and computer communication did to the human psyche and everything else, now imagine what would happen if you could really ditch your body and basically hop from one to another just by uploading a program that is you into that new body, or those new bodies. I suppose one can look at it as a version of that whole nature and your surroundings versus nurture..A digital version of it, a whole new version of it, a whole new way of existing really. I suppose we are already living that, in a biological sense, after all we are just biological machines.

The dilemma of the Tachikomas always bugged me...One thing I could never really get my head around, and in the end its more then a philosophical question, Its an experience that must be answered.

Couldn't find the full parts of the show, were the tachikomas go all philosophical..Or as the major and batou were saying...A malfunction, a glitch in there programming...Or a sort of evolution, oil mixing with water. That's why the major was looking at them funny.

Tachikoma: "Well, it's just that the way the Major's been looking at us lately is kinda scary."
Batou: "Oh, is that all? The Major's always scary, remember?"
Tachikoma: "It just seems like the Major is angry about what we've acquired recently ...Individuality."
Batou: "Individuality?"
Tachikoma: And you know that 'existence of God' thing that I had trouble understanding before? I think I'm starting to understand it now. Maybe, just maybe, it's a concept that's similar to a zero in mathematics. In other words, it's a symbol that denies the abscence of meaning, the meaning that's necessitated by the delineation of one system from another. In analog, that's God. In digital, it's zero. ...So, for the time being, no matter how much data we accumulate, we'll never have a Ghost. But analog-based people like you, Batou-san, no matter how many digital components you add through cyberization or prosthetics, your Ghost will never be damaged. Plus, you can even die, cause you've got a Ghost. You're so lucky. Tell me how it feels to have a Ghost."
Batou: "How it feels? No, I take it back, what I said earlier. You're pretty screwed up all right."

The Ship of Theseus



Who are you?,

reply to post by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi


The difference of course being GITS is fiction, while the military is working in reality. I can't imagine what it would be like to have my mind implanted into a tank, which is exactly what may make it a terrible idea. The human mind is designed to control a human body. Perhaps trying to control a tank body wouldn't work out quite so well.

All branches of the U.S. Military have quotas that must be filled on what percetage of each branches forces will be fully ROBOTIC by 2018. The USAF seems to have one of the highest with 50% of all Aircraft being either fully Robotic or Remote.

The Navy is ahead of schedual with a Highly classified High Speed Underwater form of Robotic WaterJet Fighter and the Army needs to convert 70% of all munition carrying vehicles into Remote or Fully Robotic status....which makes sense since trucking in Munitions over dangerous enemy terrain....is a good use of robotics.

The Marines are using a Robotic Surface to Surface Missle system as well as taking venerable Howitzers and making them self propelled as well as self loading with integration with all other recon type intell. craft.

DARPA....is working on a cutting edge EXOSKELETON...one earlier model of which I have seen personally. It will be integrated with all sorts of real time data inclusion as well as possibly using a form of Visual Stealth....basically...Micro-Pixeled Lights that progect the background to the front of every opposite side...making it invisible.

DARPA is the publicly known weapons development agency....there are many more working on and testing weapons that are so far ahead in scale to any other country....they will not be made public....as to do so...would cause panic amoung the Rusians and Chinese as well as Allies. Split Infinity

reply to post by SplitInfinity


Our machinations for war has overreached our grasp for them. No really with some of the things in development and in use today both the ones who make lots of noise and make really big Booms, and the more silent and deadlier ones. Its a wonder that our greatest foes and boogie men, are illiterate goat herders in the middle of nowhere...You know them evilz terrorists.

Really with all these gadgets in the works we just might need some better enemies to use them on, after all what is the point of having supper spiffy cool weapons and gadgets if you never have a chance to use them...Watch if they overreach and overdue it will all implode on them.

With all the things being in vented, we just might blow ourselves up if left to our own devices.

Or maybe what we need is what them bubble heads were always plotting, you know project blue beam, make believe other worldly invasion forces. Projections and holograms, mirages and illusions, or maybe we can convince the grays or other such paradigms to actually go to war with us...But then again they just might get convinced were serious and make this planet go boom by accident.

There are lots spiffy scifi stuff out there that will become a reality eventually in time and in one form or another, what we do with it though is another matter all together.

Invisible cloaks.


Fooling the sensors.


Lifting stuff, among other functions.


And new ways to control them, we wont even have to get up.