Virtual humans, immersive tech on tap at Army Science Conference

During a recent DOD Blogger's Roundtable, John Parmentola, director of research and laboratory management at the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology, discussed the upcoming 26th Army Science Conference , scheduled for Dec. 1 in Orlando, Fla. At the top of the agenda for this year is virtual humans.

Parmentola said the Army is focusing on several areas that they believe are the seed for the next wave of disruptive technologies. Those include biotechnology and neuroscience, immersive technologies, nanotechnology, and network science.

In the realm of neuroscience, "what we're after is really trying to understand how the brain works and to use that as a means of human-like qualities into autonomous systems and computers, as well as understanding who we are as human beings," Parmentola said. "And the knowledge we gain there is potentially far-reaching for a number of areas, including immersive technology.

And one of the goal applications of that technology is what Parmentola calls realistic virtual humans. "These are virtually humans that recognize human speech and understand language [and] also are capable of perception, thought, cognition, incorporating emotions into them as well as cultural attributes. So at the Army Science Conference we'll have the state of the art in virtual humans."

In the realm of immersive technology, Parmentola said the conference would feature a demonstration of 3-D image projection."For the first time that I know of in the world, we'll be able to actually project a 3-D image from one part of the Army Science Conference through a high bandwidth line to another part of the Army Science Conference where you'll be able to walk around that image. It's a 3-D holographic-like image. And this is something that will be demonstrated by one of our institutes in California, the Institute for Creative Technologies, which the Army funds."

In nanotechnology, beyond the realm of materials research, the Army is particularly interested in nano-electronics and quantum computing technology, Parmentola told bloggers. And then there's network science, an area Parmentola said the Army leads in, "which deals with systems that exhibit networking behavior. And these are not just human-engineered systems that we're used to, like the Internet, mobile, wireless networks, but also biologically evolved networks," such as human social networks and social insect networks, among others.

Posted by Sean Gallagher on Nov 07, 2008 at 8:12 AM