Avatar-Style Robot Soldier Being Developed By DARPA

Soldiers practically inhabiting the mechanical bodies of androids, who will take the humans’ place on the battlefield. Or sophisticated tech that spots a powerful laser ray, then stops it from obliterating its target.

In DARPA’s $2.8 billion budget for 2013, unveiled on Monday, they’ve allotted $7 million for a project titled “Avatar.” The project’s ultimate goal, not surprisingly, sounds a lot like the plot of the same-named film.

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.

The use of the word "surrogate" implies something more than just telepresence, and indeed DARPA does specify that it is looking for "key advancements in telepresence and remote operation of a ground system." It is interesting to speculate on what those "key advancements" are, which again comes back to "surrogate." To me, the implication is that there's going to be some technology that effectively puts the user "inside" the remote system, whether it's through immersive VR or exoskeleton or some sort of direct brain control. Either of these things is a realistic possibility, especially if DARPA's tossing a couple million at the problem.

Last week, when DARPA released a new video of AlphaDog cavorting through the forest, the agency noted that they wanted the ‘bot to “interact with [soldiers] in a natural way, similar to the way a trained animal and its handler interact.” AlphaDog is even being designed to follow a human commander using visual sensors, and respond to vocal commands.

Based on DARPA’s description of the “Avatar” project, which notes “key advancements in telepresence and remote operation of a ground system,” it sounds like the agency’s after an even more sophisticated robot-soldier synergy. They don’t specify the means, but DARPA’s already funded successful investigations into robots that are controlled with mind power alone. Granted, that research was performed on monkeys. But it does raise the tantalizing prospect that soldiers might one day meld minds with their very own robotic alter egos.


Boston Dynamics PETMAN project is a potential research base for the Avatar program.  Last year video of the project caused quite a stir. 

We have absolutely no evidence to suggest that PETMAN is anything more than a chemical protection clothing tester, except for the simple fact that just testing suits seems like a slightly ridiculous use for a super-advanced bipedal humanoid soldier robot. It is intriguing to speculate when DARPA throws money at new technology, and hopefully we'll be lucky enough to see some preliminary results before an army of AI controlled robotic surrogates takes over the world.

Wired