a few step closer to avatar tech?

[MaTe]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/06/opinion/mlodinow-science-frontier/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

summary:
1) take an animal
2) modify neurons with viruses to make them sensitive to light
3) insert fiber optics + control circuits to affect target neurons

get a live animal who's brain can be influenced remotely.

[Vawmataw]

Kameyul a Kepekftu ngati kameie

That's very interesting.  Technology is always improved.

Avatar's technology is fictive, but a day it will be not. Sadly, when humanity will be extinct, we will not have discovered everything in science.

I'm surprised that this has been discovered.

Kìyevame ulte Eywa ngahu

[Zusupa Tanhì]

Kosman, ma tsmuk! This is interesting. I wonder what other amazing advances are coming soon?

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

Very interesting! Methinks though, that direct electrical stimulation of neurons is far more practical and is realizable (and is regularly used) today.

In trying to think an 'avatar' through, I have always imagined a ribbon-like electrode wrapped through the brain of a living entity (the brain developed around the ribbon). This ribbon would be built using IC manufacturing technology, and would have millions, if not billions of addressable 'contacts'. These would have been conditioned into the living brian to provide a wide bandwidth electrical-neuarl interface. This would be connected to some sort of radio transceiver to provide control and feedback from the avatar 'driver'. The only real interesting twist here is that the avatars in the movie likely used some non-RF form of radio communications, or else Quaritch could have shut down the avatars with very rudimentary radio jamming equipment commonly found among military aircraft.

Although many of the technologies (including the starship, and maybe room temperature superconductivity) in Avatar are realizable, actually being able to 'build' an avatar as described in the film is extremely unlikely.

[Zusupa Tanhì]

Very interesting! Methinks though, that direct electrical stimulation of neurons is far more practical and is realizable (and is regularly used) today.

In trying to think an 'avatar' through, I have always imagined a ribbon-like electrode wrapped through the brain of a living entity (the brain developed around the ribbon). This ribbon would be built using IC manufacturing technology, and would have millions, if not billions of addressable 'contacts'. These would have been conditioned into the living brian to provide a wide bandwidth electrical-neuarl interface. This would be connected to some sort of radio transceiver to provide control and feedback from the avatar 'driver'. The only real interesting twist here is that the avatars in the movie likely used some non-RF form of radio communications, or else Quaritch could have shut down the avatars with very rudimentary radio jamming equipment commonly found among military aircraft.

That radio jamming equipment would be dangerous to use, though. It would be difficult to 'focus' it on one avatar, wouldn't it? Or maybe it would simply be accepted that if one had to be jammed all the others within range would suffer the same fate too?

[Clarke]

That radio jamming equipment would be dangerous to use, though. It would be difficult to 'focus' it on one avatar, wouldn't it? Or maybe it would simply be accepted that if one had to be jammed all the others within range would suffer the same fate too?

Would it be likely that avatars other than Jake, Grace and Norm would've also be operating then? You wouldn't want them wandering around at the same time as the big battle for the ToS.

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

A lot depends on the frequencies in use. Selective jamming would be easier at higher frequencies. Higher frequencies can also use smaller antennas, but the 'aperture effect' must also be considered. As far as sharing spectrum for several avatars, you would likely be using some sort of multiplexing scheme so you could have several 'channels' in one slice of radio spectrum. Advanced modulation techniques are being developed all the time, and I would suspec they would be quite sophisticated by 2154. All that said, the evidence from the film suggests that radio as we understand it is not being used to control the avatars.

[Tìtstewan]

Very interesting!
Real Avatar is coming nearer and nearer!
(ok, just need to make the step from fiber optics to cableless way)

[Clarke]

In trying to think an 'avatar' through, I have always imagined a ribbon-like electrode wrapped through the brain of a living entity (the brain developed around the ribbon). This ribbon would be built using IC manufacturing technology, and would have millions, if not billions of addressable 'contacts'. These would have been conditioned into the living brian to provide a wide bandwidth electrical-neuarl interface.

I would have thought it easier just to bypass the brain entirely (i.e. scoop it out  ) and connect electronics directly into the nerves "left over," the brain stem, optic nerves, and so on. After all, the thing you're after is being able to puppeteer the body, and there's no reason to care about the brain except to the extent it manages the body for you.

Of course, the Avatar themselves work nothing like that, otherwise the ending makes no sense. 

This would be connected to some sort of radio transceiver to provide control and feedback from the avatar 'driver'. The only real interesting twist here is that the avatars in the movie likely used some non-RF form of radio communications, or else Quaritch could have shut down the avatars with very rudimentary radio jamming equipment commonly found among military aircraft

This assume a level of common sense on the part of the RDA's designers which I'm not sure is there. After all, when you have people wandering around in $5bn worth of biotech, it would seem cost-effective to give (implant?) them with <$100 worth of tracking electronics... yet, oops, they lost Jake.