Avatar XPrize by ANA

Avatar XPrize by ANA - All Nippon Airways

Here is the Collins Dictionary definition of ‘airline’:

An airline is a company which provides regular services carrying people or goods in aeroplanes.

‘Aeroplanes.’ Seems obvious. Except that Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) has another idea.

It wants to get people from A to B like other airlines. But instead of using aircraft, it has been considering teleportation.

Or to be more precise, ANA is promoting the development of avatar technology where you can remotely see, feel and hear in any part of the world, even though you might physically be thousands of miles away. The ‘teleportation’ involved is a transfer of your resources and skills, rather than your physical body.

Launched at this year’s SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, the $10 million ANA Avatar XPRIZE allows teams around the world to enter and “accelerate the development of a multi-purpose avatar system that will enable us to...interact with physical environments and other people through an integrated robotic device.”

To get a share of the $10 million, the winning team needs to “demonstrate a robotic avatar that allows an untrained operator to complete a diverse series of tasks” and “avatars must demonstrate the ability to execute tasks across a variety of real-world scenarios.”

How Did ANA Hit On THe Idea Of Creating Avatars?

The driving force behind the initiative are ANA employees Akira Fukabori, Market Communication Intrapreneur, and Kevin Kajitani, Digital Design Lab Intrapreneur. In 2015 they won an XPRIZE themselves, where they reimagined transportation.

This took them on a journey where they eventually persuaded their bosses at ANA to put $10 million behind the development of avatar technology via the XPRIZE partnership.

This represents a considerable leap of faith in a technology that is still in its infancy and that some would say that has little to do with an airline.

Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kaijitana disagree.

In an interview with SimpliFlying CEO Shashank Nigam on the sidelines of the recent Aviation Festival (Singapore), they point out that an airline’s mission is in fact to connect people physically, with air travel only covering 6% of the world’s population every year.

As they explained in the interview,

We (ANA) started with two helicopters, and became the launch customer of the 787 Dreamliner. So we don’t care if it’s the aircraft itself, our mission is really to connect 7.5 billion people. We have to rethink how we connect people. So that’s how we came up with the Avatar.

You Can Offer Your Skills To 7.5 Billion People.

Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kaijitana actually did start by thinking about Star-Trek style teleportation but realised that though the technology was in theory possible, in practice it was centuries away, even to get to an atomic or molecular level.

That then led them onto thinking about creating Avatars and persuading ANA to back the project.

In essence the solution that Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kaijitana have in mind is for you to be able to ‘teleport’ your abilities into a robotic skeleton.

In a talk which they gave at the Aviation Festival, they explained one way in which ANA could use the Avatar in its day to day business.

As an official airline partner of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, ANA will of course play a major role in getting athletes, as well as visitors to and from the games.

Fukabori and Kaijitana gave a hypothetical example of a French employee of ANA having their Avatar at Tokyo Narita or Haneda. That employee would be on hand to assist French speaking passengers and feel physically present at the airport, despite still being in France.

However, Fukabori and Kaijitana have also emphasised the wider societal impact.

This technology is a way to share 7.5 billion people’s skills. Any doctor, technologist, educator, would have a way to share their know-how with anyone, anywhere in the world and be able to actually interact with people physically in that location (which has the Avatar Robot).

Or, as Dr Peter Diamandis founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation put it: “It’s a way to bridge the gap between distance, time and cultures.”

Diamandis claimed that “the industry has great disruptive power.”

“Over the next 20 years, it will grow into a multibillion-dollar market as more and more consumers use them. And they will entirely change the travel equation.”

According to Diamandis, by 2032 these avatar robots will become mainstream technology.

ANA Travel Unlimited

The Avatar prize is a wider part of ANA’s ‘Travel Unlimited’ initiative.

In the past we’ve commended ANA for the high production values of their online content and this is no exception.

The Travel Unlimited website opens, as with other ANA microsites, with a full screen video.

This then links to the pages about the Avatar project. In addition to the $10 prize fund launched at SXSW, these detail how Avatar tests are taking place in the Oita Prefecture, Japan.

Proving again that the Avatar project is real and not a PR stunt, this includes a mock space facility, as well as tests at agricultural, fishing, education and healthcare sites.

The Travel Unlimited site also links to a separate project, the ‘Blue Wing’ initiative.

Here frequent flyers can donate flights, or a % of their ticket price to “Changemakers” such as Elizabeth Hausler who is training local residents and engineers to build safer houses and schools in the developing world, and Jack Sim, who is working to combat disease by providing proper toilets for everyone in the developing world.

Finally, how does all this link back to airline marketing? First of all, the Avatar prize has the potential to do a lot to enhance ANA as a brand.

It positions ANA as being at the forefront of some fairly cutting-edge technology, and as an innovator.

There are significant philanthropic uses for this technology, as we’ve mentioned. And Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kaijitana are excellent brand ambassadors, who are currently promoting the Avatar concept at conferences and talks worldwide. When we heard them speak we were really enthused and excited by their vision.

Then, we can foresee lots of content opportunities as the prize winners are announced in 2020 and 2021, and as we’ve discussed in previous issues, ANA’s online content programme is excellent (see our March 2018 and September 2017 for examples).

Key Take-Away

How many organisations, let alone airlines, would support and fund a piece of technology that on the face of it seems so far removed from its core business?

ANA has had the foresight to do so, as the reality is, this isn’t so far removed from airlines.

If Dr Peter Diamandis is right and this technology will be mainstream in 2032, there won’t be a need to (for example) take a flight to a conference to give a presentation.

You’ll just be able to virtually transport yourself into your Avatar and feel physically there. It could in time become quite disruptive for the industry and it makes sense to plan for this now.

Of course, ANA is also to be commended for supporting something that has the potential for significant societal good.

Examples we’ve seen of how this technology could be used, include firefighters using avatars to fight fires in remote locations, to people being able to check in on their elderly relatives, to life threatening diseases being treated remotely in the developing world.

We’ve chosen it as our campaign of the month, not only because it is a true make a difference initiative, but also because it is a textbook example of how an airline (or indeed any brand) should get involved in emerging technology.

It’s not just a badging exercise it has something we emphasise in every report - authenticity and realness.

ANA has supported the Avatar project with a significant amount of money, but it also has actual staff members acting as evangelists, and trying to bring the technology to life.