This is a poorly done link bait article along the lines of the earlier coverage on the Google self driving car legislation. It implies that DARPA is funding an

This is a poorly done link bait article along the lines of the earlier coverage on the Google self driving car legislation. It implies that DARPA is funding an end stage program to develop Avatar like robots. Instead what they are doing is creating program to develop the basic algorithms that would allow a person to remote control a humanoid robot. All the hardware, power systems, control technologies, will take at least decade of advancement before this becomes practical. This is to be expected, it's how DARPA works. They provide the money to go from a few ideas floating around to solid research and technologies that can be used to create functioning systems. This is what they did with the self driving cars, 7 years ago they sponsored the first competitions, (in addition to other projects they were funding) and just now are we starting to see the first system that could truly be considered self driving cars. Even those system have numerous draw backs that will take lots of engineering and research to overcome.