How long will it take before human-like avatars become a reality? In this episode, we’ll examine what it will take to bring it all together. We’ll look at how far we are from developing avatars that can mimic our steps with ease, help us meet people in other places, extend our reach beyond human capabilities and continue to connect the world around us.

The senses of touch and human dexterity are being channeled into telerobotics through haptic technology. Haptics allows us to literally feel what the robotic hands are experiencing. “Touch is the cornerstone of the next generation of human-machine interface technologies,” says Jake Rubin, the founder of HaptX, which has created the world’s first haptic telerobotic system that transmits realistic touch feedback to an operator anywhere in the world as part of ANA’s Avatar X initiative. Next up: bringing that technology to a full suit that can ignite the body’s entire senses. For avatar systems, actuators — the small devices that relay touch — need to be light enough to enable full range of motion. In this episode, we’ll examine how haptic technology could eventually provide avatars with the sensory cues necessary to connect humans to another form.  

Artificial intelligence, which includes machine learning, language processing and sentiment analysis, is enhancing the human experience by anticipating what we want to do next and facilitating it so we can reach our goals more quickly. Such advanced technologies are already rapidly becoming entrenched in our society. From Alexa and Siri to customer service software to personalized news feeds, the objective is to create tools that will quantify behaviors, look for patterns and engage humans. Avatars that can make simple connections and process-oriented decisions on their own will allow for more engaging human-to-human contact through avatars. In this episode, we discuss the many AI technologies that are currently in use and on the horizon, and how the continued advancement of these technologies is an essential component to developing the cognitive platforms necessary for avatars.