VR Pioneer Helping Advise $10 Million ANA Avatar XPRIZE, the Contest to Merge Robotics With VR/AR-Driven Human Expertise

The ANA Avatar XPrize is a four-year, $10 million competition to create a cross-reality, multipurpose avatar system -- essentiall,y a mix of VR/AR technology with a robotics solution, merging the abilities and perceptions of a human operator with a machine (humanoid or otherwise) capable of going to places and performing tasks that would otherwise be difficult or impossible for us to do. Among the XPRIZE advisors to the contest is VR pioneer Jacki Morie, who I bumped into at the recent VRLA conference, at which XPRIZE sponsored a booth -- which was surprisingly and disappointingly empty of visitors, at least for the time that I was there. Because the prize is encouraging the creation of a VR-enabled device that could easily become truly transformative:

"With a digital avatar," as Jacki put it to me, "you can’t touch and smell. But with a physical avatar, you can, for example, wheel your mother around in an avatar 100 miles away. What if everyone had a physical avatar in your closet, and they could, say, fix your washing machine or do an emergency medical procedure?"

In other words, rather than the repair person or the emergency surgeon having to drive to your location (or vice versa), they could simply strap into a VR rig connected to your avatar in storage, power it on, and get to work. "Then you can physically embody expertise."

Jacki allows it will take some time to realize this vision, but she likes how XPRIZE encourages many diverse teams to work on this challenge from many directions:

"It may take many years," as she puts it, "but XPRIZE pushes people from across disciplines to work together."

Here's all the details for getting involved. Even if you're not able to join the competition itself, XPRIZE is seeking feedback on the contest guidelines over the next few weeks:

We welcome public comments on these draft ANA Avatar XPRIZE Competition Guidelines. Please send all comments to [email protected]. The public comment period closes on June 15, 2018. Following the public comment period, XPRIZE will issue updated Guidelines that describe the prize structure and technical specifications.

Comments

[TonyVT Skarredghost]

Cool... but how can a small team develop such a thing at its own expenses? Only the winning teams get the money.. it has no sense