DARPA Puts $7,000,000 Into AVATAR Surrogate Project

Spectrum tells us that DARPA has recently poured $7,000,000 dollars of its budget into an "Avatar" surrogate project. The full explanation of their goals are described in detail below.

"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.”

So we'll be using robots as opposed to James Cameron's blue aliens in Avatar, but still, very cool. To give you an example of the kind of wizardry at work check out some pics and a video of PETMAN--a bi-pedal robot who can keep his balance, run, jump, and do push-ups!

While still in development, this should ideally be what the finished model would look like.

I think I'd be more comfortable with killable aliens...is it too late to switch?!

Email Me: MickJoest@Geektyrant.com Twitter: @MickJoest