What if you could be in two places at once? With avatar robots, you could feel like you’re in another place without physically travelling. All Nippon Airways sponsors the Avatar XPRIZE competition with $10 million to encourage making this science fiction a reality in the next few years.
The ANA Avatar XPRIZE aims to spur the development of just such a technology. Teams developing avatars operated remotely using sight, hearing and touch will compete in a pair of million-dollar milestone competitions over the next few years, before ultimately battling it out for an $8 million purse in 2022. Sending these surrogate bodies into space may not be practical for many years, but in the meantime, organizers are hoping to use them for earthbound applications like navigating disaster scenes.
i-Botics has formed a consortium existing of University Twente, ETH Zürich, Halodi Robotics, Haption, Sensiks and TNO.
