Hello!
This blog will cover the ANA AVATAR XPRIZE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ibYDxC3PU ) challenge.

Since 2014, iPresence has been ahead of the market in developing and providing services specializing in the fields of communication x robotics and advanced technology.In the midst of this, I came across the news on the internet that the XPRIZE Foundation would be holding a global competition on the theme of avatar robot development, sponsored by ANA.

XPrize is an American non-profit organization that plans and manages competitions for the development of new technologies that are useful to mankind. The mission of XPRIZE is to achieve “a revolutionary breakthrough to help the development of mankind” through a global competition in which various individuals, companies, and organizations submit innovative ideas and technologies to specific issues.In the past, Ansari XPrize, which was based on spacecraft (it is still fresh in our memory that the aircraft of the winning team was used for the success of the world's first manned flight into space by Virgin Galactic in 2021), AI, environmental conservation, There is XPrize for education business.

I vaguely knew that there was such a competition until it actually happened to me.However, I was interested in the space business from the beginning of the business, and I thought that the use of avatar robots in outer space and Mars would become commonplace. HAKUTO project to develop a lunar rover from Japan sponsored by JAL (https://ispace-inc.com/team-hakuto/ .And when I looked again, I saw that the HAKUTO project was also part of the "Google Lunar X Prize", and I was able to understand the significance of challenging XPrize and what it could lead to relatively quickly. .

This $10M ANA Avatar XPRIZE will make the world more connected through technological innovation.Towards the future Avatar system development that can transmit your presence, human five senses, actions, etc. to remote locations in real time. A global competition with a total prize of $10M (approximately over 10 billion yen) over four years.In this competition"The AVATAR system is a system that allows a remote operator to operate a remote robot AVATAR and negotiate with the environment and people on the AVATAR side."It is a challenge for research teams around the world to propose and develop new avatar robots.

There, we applied with two IT ventures in Kobe, iPresence and XOOMS, as the starting point, and formed a team "XPresence" with Knowledge Capital members and Osaka Institute of Technology.https://www.x-presence.com/ will be created and challenged.

When I first saw the information about this competition, it was still a field that was still undeveloped in the world.Speaking of robots, there is a strong concept of AI, and almost no one in Japan has even heard of an avatar robot, and the definition of an avatar robot was vague even on the XPRIZE side.We also have a small self-propelled telepresence robot (self-propelled small telerobot CARE-JIRO for nursing homes). https://youtu.be/yg-iYOJkBlo ), etc., but the humanoid avatar robot that the foundation is looking for has no track record, no way to realize it, and no funding sources. It was nothing but reckless.However, since 10, I have found the potential in this field, started a business, and challenged myself. I talked to Mr. Yasuda, the president of XOOMS, which is developing the VR content business that we worked on together.

We believe that an avatar robot will require the development of a robot body and an operation interface that utilizes VR goggles to operate the robot remotely while grasping the space around the robot. This is because I vaguely felt that XOOMS could be in charge of development of detection and interface.

I think it was around New Year's at the end of 2018, but when Mr. Yasuda explained over the phone, he said, "I don't really understand, but if Chris is going to do it, I'll do it." I applied. . .

…next chapter, “Challengers from all over the world gather in Geneva, Switzerland! "followed by

#avatarxprize #avatar #futuretech #techforgood #FutureTech #xpresence #telepotation #avatar #remote @XPRIZE