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Epochal Historian
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/virtual_astronauts_040901.html
Virtual Humans Proposed As Space Travelers By Leonard DavidSenior Space Writerposted: 01 September 200406:52 am ET
TELLURIDE, COLORADO -- Better make room for an extra crewmember aboard any spaceship heading outward. This person won’t require food, oxygen or water, nor even need to buckle up for safety. The tag-along traveler could, however, be a lifesaver in terms of getting the expedition to and from a celestial destination.
Roll out the welcome mat for the virtual astronaut and enter the 3D space of Peter Plantec, a consultant in virtual human design and animation, as well as a leading expert on visual entertainment. He also initiated the "Sylvie" project -- the first commercially available virtual human interface.
And if dispatching virtual humans from Earth doesn’t turn on your thrusters, think about this. It’s likely that extraterrestrial civilizations might send surrogate entities our way instead of propelling their delicate, soft-shell selves across interstellar mileage.
Enter interfacing
"In a sense, our space probes are a kind of virtual human," Plantec told SPACE.com after speaking at the 5th Annual Telluride Tech Festival, held here August 13-15. "They are very sophisticated. They have to make decisions on their own…not many, but some. It’s a very primitive stage of virtual human technology," he said.
Plantec envisions a partnership between in-the-flesh space voyagers and virtual humans. "We humans are fairly limited characters. We are very good at soft responses…but not very good at high-speed, highly complex responses. And that’s what virtual humans are really great at. That’s their deal," he noted.
From a space perspective, not investigating the utility of virtual human technology in the future exploration of space is insane, Plantec said. "It’s more than just looking like or acting like a human. It is all the capabilities behind that…the capabilities that can be used to make journeys into space more successful."
Filtering the input
Most certainly, a humans-to-Mars mission would be very complicated, fully loaded with high-tech gear and festooned with operating manuals, along with scads of on-line documentation.
A virtual human could be set up to monitor highly complex systems in real time. It can interface with the human sojourner, easing that person’s workload, Plantec advised, by monitoring onboard systems and automatically make whatever critical adjustments it has been authorized to do.
Virtual Humans Proposed As Space Travelers By Leonard DavidSenior Space Writerposted: 01 September 200406:52 am ET
TELLURIDE, COLORADO -- Better make room for an extra crewmember aboard any spaceship heading outward. This person won’t require food, oxygen or water, nor even need to buckle up for safety. The tag-along traveler could, however, be a lifesaver in terms of getting the expedition to and from a celestial destination.
Roll out the welcome mat for the virtual astronaut and enter the 3D space of Peter Plantec, a consultant in virtual human design and animation, as well as a leading expert on visual entertainment. He also initiated the "Sylvie" project -- the first commercially available virtual human interface.
And if dispatching virtual humans from Earth doesn’t turn on your thrusters, think about this. It’s likely that extraterrestrial civilizations might send surrogate entities our way instead of propelling their delicate, soft-shell selves across interstellar mileage.
Enter interfacing
"In a sense, our space probes are a kind of virtual human," Plantec told SPACE.com after speaking at the 5th Annual Telluride Tech Festival, held here August 13-15. "They are very sophisticated. They have to make decisions on their own…not many, but some. It’s a very primitive stage of virtual human technology," he said.
Plantec envisions a partnership between in-the-flesh space voyagers and virtual humans. "We humans are fairly limited characters. We are very good at soft responses…but not very good at high-speed, highly complex responses. And that’s what virtual humans are really great at. That’s their deal," he noted.
From a space perspective, not investigating the utility of virtual human technology in the future exploration of space is insane, Plantec said. "It’s more than just looking like or acting like a human. It is all the capabilities behind that…the capabilities that can be used to make journeys into space more successful."
Filtering the input
Most certainly, a humans-to-Mars mission would be very complicated, fully loaded with high-tech gear and festooned with operating manuals, along with scads of on-line documentation.
A virtual human could be set up to monitor highly complex systems in real time. It can interface with the human sojourner, easing that person’s workload, Plantec advised, by monitoring onboard systems and automatically make whatever critical adjustments it has been authorized to do.