Sponsored by ANA, Japan’s only 5-star airline, the winning team of the ANA Avatar XPRIZE will combine state-of-the-art technologies to demonstrate a robotic avatar that allows an untrained operator to complete a diverse series of tasks, from simple to complex, in a physical environment at least 100km away. Avatars must demonstrate the ability to execute tasks across a variety of real-world scenarios. In the future, avatar applications could help provide critical care and deploy immediate emergency response in natural disaster scenarios, stretching the boundaries of what is possible, and maximizing the impact of skill and knowledge-sharing.
Pointer from Peter Diamindis’ Abundance Insider email list, which I recommend.
I really like the robotic avatar idea.
I like this idea too, although I do wonder why an airline would sponsor such a prize — in competition surely?
The stress of town centre shopping is losing out to Internet shopping, and realistic AVR virtual travel could do the same to the stress of airports.
The PCM pioneer Alec Reeves predicted that telecommunications would eventually put an end to the snarl ups of physical travel by the year 2000, but so far this hasn’t happened. He said people will move minds not bodies. Maybe AVR Avatars will do the trick.
http://www.quantium.plus.com/ahr/horizon.htm
The world could use more “prizes” to reward innovation.
Even in development, it would be better for US and EU gov’t agencies to use more prizes as rewards to NGOs who achieve good results, rather than project plan judging with little post-implementation review or evaluation.
One of the ways this might be most valuable is in getting around the immigration problem. If people in poor countries could work remotely this way, it would be less important for them to be able to actually move across borders.
This reminded me of “Tongtong’s Summer,” a wonderful story in Ken Lui’s collection of contemporary Chinese science fiction, Invisible Planets.