Avatars will help us navigate tomorrow’s electronic maze

By Dick Pelletier

     Say goodbye to TV remote controls and the computer mouse and keyboard. By as early as 2010 to 2015, a computerized image of your choice displayed on wall-size screens throughout the house will be available to hear your commands and speak to you in perfect human voice.

     Selecting TV programs will be easy. Turn on any display screen in the house and your personal avatar appears. Hi Dick, what can I do for you? “I want to see Sunday’s ‘Desperate Housewives’.” Here it is Dick, and I won’t reveal the ending, enjoy.

     Avatars will also interface with PCs, which will signal the end for most of our mouse-clicking and typing. Simply say, “Computer, display last night’s email; good, reply to my sister, tell her Friday’s OK; and invite the family to my house next Saturday for dinner; now ring David in Japan on Skype.”

     Most people think that interactive systems like this are a long ways off, but two trends are quickening the pace. Improved speech-recognition and interactive voice-response systems now mimic normal-spoken language more accurately – and today’s computer graphics can create 3-D avatars with an uncanny “real” look.

     Honda, with help from IBM, will soon introduce an incredibly efficient speech-recognition system that allows drivers to get voice navigation guidance without having to manually punch in information or take their eyes off the road.

     And with the advent of multi-core CPU architectures from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, Microsoft, experts say, could reserve entire cores in future operating systems exclusively to voice technologies providing it with enough power to become the next decade’s “killer app” for PCs.

     Nvidia’s Andrew Humbar believes his company will soon create 3-D avatars made from 150,000 programmable triangles that can generate realistic body images and facial expressions, indiscernible from real people.

     Although we have a way to go before avatars become totally lifelike, they are working their way into our lives. Today you can represent yourself with an avatar attached to emails and blogs. And in the future, experts predict these clever images will not only look and act like real people, but in some cases, they may even outperform us.

     At MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, scientists have developed an artificial intelligence program that mimics the human brain in recognizing street scenes. Forward-thinkers hope this technology will one day enable avatars to achieve true human logic.

     These wonder creations are popping up everywhere. In Japan, Yuki Terai thrills as a virtual rock star and is a national idol, Ananova gained notoriety reporting weather, and futurist Ray Kurzweil created Ramona, an alter-ego that hosts his web site and has performed live on stage.

     In the next decade, avatars will help us buy and sell online, become better educated, receive medical help, and talk with distant friends. And real-life 3-D images on wall-size displays will make us feel that we are in the same room with these amazing lifelike characters.

     Finally, as science fiction so often precedes real science, Titanic Director James Cameron’s next film, Avatar, scheduled for summer 2009, uses innovative graphics that could provide a glimpse of how tomorrow’s avatars may appear, in what promises to be a most “magical future” time.

This article appeared in various print publications and on-line blogs. Comments always welcome.