14 DAY TRIAL // The National Science Foundation recently announced that people would soon be able to make perfect replicas of themselves, though admittedly not the flesh-and-bone kind. Through a project called LifeLike, they will be able to create a virtual identity for themselves, which, in turn, would be able to communicate with other people, as in, for example, video-conference callers. The avatar would behave in very much the same way you do, as it would be custom-designed specifically for this task.
In charge of the research were experts from the University of Central Florida (UCF) Intelligent Systems Laboratory (ISL), working together with colleagues from the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). The basic goal of their research couldn't be simpler – to create a virtual simulation (avatar) of a person that is as similar to the “original” as possible. The technology has just been proven, which means that a few years will pass until we will see this invention put to a widespread use. Over the next period, the researchers will work on improving their model, and on making it look more and more veridical.
One of the most difficult challenges ahead of the joint team is creating an avatar that not only talks like you would, but that also behaves and moves like you do. “Visual realism is tough. Research shows that over 70% of communication is non-verbal,” Evl Associate Professor of Computer Science Jason Leigh said in a recent interview. He is also the leader of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory team segment. Leigh argued that mimicking gestures, posture, and subtle facial cues was the most difficult part of their enterprise. Each individual that will have an avatar made for them needs to be carefully observed in a multitude of postures, so that the virtual self can have a large number of options to choose from.
“We have applied artificial intelligence in many ways, but if you're really going to implement it. The only way to do it is to do it through some sort of embodiment of a human, and that's an avatar,” Electrical Engineering Professor Avelino Gonzalez, who is the head of the ISL team segment of the study, told in another interview. He argued that one of the first applications that sprang to mind for the new avatar technology was the creation of renditions of historical figures, such as Benjamin Franklin, with which children could interact in schools, thus making learning more fun.