Recreating Avatar Technology at Home

“This is the culmination of my last year’s work. I control the robot’s arms through the Kinect and Wii remotes. I control the robot’s navigation through the Kinect and treadmill. I control the robot’s head through the head mounted display (HMD). I also see through the robot’s eyes with the HMD. After doing this exercise, it became apparent that the next feature to add is hearing and speaking through the robot. Luckily both the NAO and my HMD have microphones and speakers so this shouldn’t be too difficult.” More information.

This about this: In addition to recreating the basic technology depicted in the film “Avatar”, this also shos how straightforward it is to create telepresence. One would hope NASA is looking at simple, commercially available and easily adaptable interfaces such as these whereby Robonuat can be controlled – from the ISS and from Earth.