A concept for remote-controlled “avatar” humanoid robots, presented by ANA, Japan’s largest airline, was named one of the three “top prize concept” finalists at XPRIZE’s recent inaugural Visioneers event. The ANA AVATAR Team was led by scientist Harry Kloor.
He presented an ambitious vision of a future in which human pilots would hear, see, talk, touch, and feel as if a humanoid robotic body were their own, instantaneously across the globe and beyond. Ray Kurzweil is Co-Prize Developer.
The avatar concept, an extension of the avatar portrayed in the movie Avatar, involves haptics, motion capture, AR, VR, artificial intelligence, and deep machine learning technologies.
“The ANA team presented a compelling AVATAR XPRIZE concept,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, executive chairman and founder of XPRIZE. “The Avatar XPRIZE will initiate a revolution in the way we work, travel, explore and interact with each other.”
“The top three Visioneers teams, with prize concepts in the areas of cancer, avatars, and ALS, have been certified by XPRIZE as ‘ready to launch’ and we look forward to working with the teams to finalize the prize designs, secure the necessary funding, and launch one or all of these world-changing competitions,” Marcus Shingles, CEO of XPRIZE told KurzweilAI.
Other top concepts were presented by Deloitte and Caterpillar for conquering cancer and ALS, respectively. The Visioneers Summit is intended to help the XPRIZE strategic approach evolve and advance its prize designs.