XPRIZE Launches New $10 Million Open Innovation Challenge

March 16, 2018 By IdeaConnection

One of the biggest pieces of open innovation news from this week was the announcement of the launch of the $10M ANA Avatar XPRIZE by XPRIZE and All Nippon Airways (ANA).

It is a four-year global open innovation contest to develop real-life avatars.


What is being sought is a multi-purpose avatar system that will allow us to see, hear, touch and interact with remote physical environments and people via an integrated robotic device.

“Our ability to physically experience another geographic location, or to provide on-the-ground assistance where needed, is limited by cost and the simple availability of time,” said XPRIZE Founder and Executive Chairman Dr. Peter H. Diamandis.

The ANA Avatar XPRIZE can enable the creation of an audacious alternative that could bypass these limitations allowing us to more rapidly and efficiently distribute skill and hands-on expertise to distant geographic locations where they are needed, bridging the gap between distance, time and cultures.”

There would be many potential uses of such a system, including:

• Providing health and medical care at a distance
• Transporting life-saving skills to disaster areas where it’s too dangerous for people to go
• Deploying skills and knowledge for maintenance and repairs

The open innovation contest is sponsored by All Nippon Airways and participants will have to demonstrate that a robotic avatar can allow an untrained operator to perform numerous tasks- from simple to complex- in a physical setting that is at least 100 kilometers away.

Grand Prize

The deadline for teams to register to participate is October 31, 2018. The overall grand prize is $8 million and there will be two milestone competitions that will each award $1 million. The grand prize will be awarded in October 2021.


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Reader Comments


very good
Posted by ali on March 22, 2018

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