Following in the steps of director James Cameron, a young Russian
media mogul has launched his own Avatar project. And Russian scientists
in one of the Moscow’s suburbs are striving to create one.
Dmitry Itskov does not want to explore a new planet, though: he just
plans to make a human brain immortal by transplanting it into a robot's
body.
According to the company’s website, the project consists of four stages.
Stage
One – called Avatar A – aimed at creating a robotic copy of the human
body controlled though a brain-computer interface. The stage is to be
completed by 2020.
Stage Two – Avatar B (Body B) – to create
an Avatar in which a human brain is transplanted at the end of one’s
life. The stage is to be completed by 2025.
Stage Three –
Avatar C (Re-brain) – to create an Avatar with an artificial brain, in
which a human personality or consciousness is transferred at the end of
one’s life. The stage is to start in 2030 and to be completed by 2035.
And the final – Stage Four – Avatar D -A hologram-like avatar. To be started in 2040, and completed by 2045.
The
Avatar-A project’s aim, Itskov says, is to create an autonomous system
of human brain nutrition, preserve nerve connections so that the brain
does not degrade or die, making it possible to transplant a human head
onto an artificial body.
“Unlike in the film, we want to create an android, and not a biological body,” Itskov told RT. “I think it will become available to people in just 10 years in the exactly same form.”
The
idea is based on work by US scientist Robert White. In experiments with
chimps, White showed that a monkey’s brain can be taken out of the
skull and plugged into a system that will keep it alive.
“Our main goal is to preserve personality and prolong life,” Itskov told RT. “Scientists
say that if it weren’t for certain diseases and degradations of the
cardiovascular system, our brains could live for two or maybe even three
hundred years.”
Itskov says that this “avatar” will live
according to completely different principles – it will not need food or
probably even a home. The scientist sees it as a way to combat nature.
“Our
civilization is experiencing growing pressure in the form of natural
and technological disasters – we’re becoming hostages of the
technologies we’ve created,” Itskov told RT. “In the future, society will change radically, mostly because humans will move on to the next step of evolution.”
The
team is now in the process of creating a fund in the US, which will
look for and develop the technology necessary for the project.
Russian scientists on the cusp of creating Avatar one
A
team of researchers in the Moscow suburb of Zelenograd is on the cusp
of creating Avatar-A a human like robot controlled through a
brain-computer interface.
“It is not an android; it should
fully resemble a real man. It would be hard to tell him from a man both
– close up and from afar,” explains chief designer Vladimir Konyshev.
“I
think in the next few months we will make a robot that will be able to
move around on wheels. The next step is to make a robot that can walk,
controlled by the movements of a human operator, which we hope to do by
next year. If you want to see what our ultimate goal is you can watch
movies like Avatar or Surrogates, robots controlled by human thought,” he told RT.
Dmitry
Itskov served as a prototype for the machine, thus the robot was
nicknamed Dima. Currently there are tests to fix the robot’s eyesight.
Each eye is an individual camera which observes and remembers surroundings, obstacles and faces.
Underneath
the latex skin lies a complex system of motors and electronics. The
designers hope this robotic skeleton, could be the first step towards
creating the next generation of artificial intelligence, perhaps even
robots that think for themselves.
So far, the hands operate
separately from the head and the body. The work on them is still in
progress. Pneumatic muscles clench the fingers into a fist; compressed
air forces them to contract.
Not all of the projects being
developed in Zelenograd sound like they've come straight out of a Sci-Fi
movie. Some, like this robotic hand are actually being used to help
people who have lost limbs.
“This definitely can be used
to help disabled people. We already ran some experiments. A subject
without a hand tried this technology. He said the hand worked for him.
All it takes is to attach electrodes to the undamaged part of the arm so
they can read the muscle activity,” software engineer Andrey Telezhinsky explained to RT.
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