AUSTIN, TEXAS--(Business Wire / Korea Newswire) March 13, 2018 -- Today, at the South By Southwest® (SXSW®) conference in Austin, XPRIZE Founder and Executive Chairman Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, in partnership with ANA, will announce the launch of the $10M ANA Avatar XPRIZE, a four-year global competition to develop real-life avatars. With registration opening today, teams around the world are challenged to accelerate the development of a multi-purpose avatar system that will enable us to remotely see, hear, touch and interact with physical environments and other people through an integrated robotic device.
The ANA Avatar XPRIZE originated from XPRIZE's six-month concept incubator program, called Visioneers, in 2016, led by scientist Dr.2 Harry Kloor (Ph.D., Ph.D.), where the ANA Visioneers team first proposed the avatar concept. This concept received top honors at the Visioneers Summit finale and was qualified as "ready for launch" by a group of 250 mentors including prominent corporate and political leaders, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, artists, technologists and scientists.
Following the "Inspiration of Japan" high quality of service, ANA has been awarded the respected 5-Star rating from SKYTRAX for 5 consecutive years starting in 2013. Additionally, ANA has been recognized by Air Transport World as "Airline of the Year" three times in the past 10 years - 2007, 2013 and 2018, becoming one of the few airlines winning this prestigious award for multiple times.