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Analysis and Perspectives on the ANA Avatar XPRIZE Competition

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Abstract

The ANA Avatar XPRIZE was a four-year competition to develop a robotic “avatar” system to allow a human operator to sense, communicate, and act in a remote environment as though physically present. The competition featured a unique requirement that judges would operate the avatars after less than one hour of training on the human–machine interfaces, and avatar systems were judged on both objective and subjective scoring metrics. This paper presents a unified summary and analysis of the competition from technical, judging, and organizational perspectives. We study the use of telerobotics technologies and innovations pursued by the competing teams in their avatar systems, and correlate the use of these technologies with judges’ task performance and subjective survey ratings. It also summarizes perspectives from team leads, judges, and organizers about the competition’s execution and impact to inform the future development of telerobotics and telepresence.

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Data Availibility

The data that support the findings of this study are available from XPRIZE Foundation but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under licence for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of XPRIZE Foundation.

Notes

  1. https://www.3drudder.com.

  2. https://www.hoboloco.com.

  3. https://ifeeltech.eu.

  4. NimbRo_network: https://github.com/AIS-Bonn/nimbro_network.

  5. UDPROS: http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/UDPROS.

  6. https://ieeetv.ieee.org/event/ieee-telepresence-workshop.

  7. https://www.rssavatarxprizews.org/program.html.

  8. https://telepresence.ieee.org/events/2022-ieee-symposium-on-telepresence.

  9. https://telepresence.ieee.org/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Grainger School of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, USA

    Kris Hauser & Patrick Naughton

  2. School of Computing and Engineering, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK

    Eleanor ‘Nell’ Watson

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, UNIST, Ulsan, South Korea

    Joonbum Bae

  4. MACE Virtual Labs, Houston, USA

    Josh Bankston

  5. Autonomous Intelligent Systems, Computer Science Institute VI, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Sven Behnke

  6. B98 Ventures LLC, New York, USA

    Bill Borgia

  7. Soft Robotics for Human Cooperation and Rehabilitation, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Manuel G. Catalano

  8. Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Stefano Dafarra & Daniele Pucci

  9. Department of Human Machine Teaming, TNO, The Hague, Netherlands

    Jan B. F. van Erp

  10. Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Twente, The Hague, Netherlands

    Jan B. F. van Erp

  11. Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Texas A &M University, College Station, USA

    Thomas Ferris

  12. Tangible Research, Chico, USA

    Jeremy Fishel

  13. California State University, Chico, Chico, USA

    Jeremy Fishel

  14. The Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA

    Guy Hoffman

  15. INRIA, Nancy, France

    Serena Ivaldi

  16. Université de Lorraine, Lorraine, France

    Serena Ivaldi

  17. CNRS, Vandoeuvre-lés-Nancy, France

    Serena Ivaldi

  18. CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory, IRL3218, Tsukuba, Japan

    Fumio Kanehiro & Abderrahmane Kheddar

  19. CNRS-University of Montpellier, LIRMM, Montpellier, France

    Abderrahmane Kheddar

  20. Pollen Robotics, Bordeaux, France

    Gaëlle Lannuzel & Steve NGuyen

  21. All These Worlds, LLC, Marina del Rey, USA

    Jacquelyn Ford Morie

  22. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA

    Paul Oh & Jean Vaz

  23. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Experiential Robotics, Northeastern University, Boston, USA

    Taskin Padir

  24. Golden Knight Technologies, Fairfax, USA

    Jim Pippine

  25. Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea

    Jaeheung Park

  26. Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, USA

    Peter Whitney

  27. Raytheon Technologies Research Center, Chicago, USA

    Peggy Wu

  28. XPRIZE Foundation, Culver City, USA

    David Locke

Authors
  1. Kris Hauser
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  2. Eleanor ‘Nell’ Watson
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  3. Joonbum Bae
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  4. Josh Bankston
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  5. Sven Behnke
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  6. Bill Borgia
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  7. Manuel G. Catalano
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  8. Stefano Dafarra
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  9. Jan B. F. van Erp
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  12. Guy Hoffman
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  15. Abderrahmane Kheddar
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  18. Patrick Naughton
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  20. Paul Oh
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  27. Peggy Wu
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  28. David Locke
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Contributions

Authors include representatives of ANA Avatar XPRIZE teams (K. Hauser, P. Naughton, AVATRINA; J. Bae, Team UNIST; S. Behnke, NimbRo; M. Catalano, AlterEgo; S. Dafarra, D. Pucci, iCub; J. van Erp, i-Botics; J. Fishel, Converge Robotics; F. Kanehiro, A. Kheddar, Janus; G. Lannuzel, S. Nguyen, Pollen Robotics; P. Oh, J. Vaz, Avatar Hubo; T. Padir, P. Whitney, Team Northeastern; J. Park, Team SNU), judges (E. Watson, J. Bankston, B. Borgia, T. Ferris, G. Hoffman, S. Ivaldi, J. Morie, P. Wu), and organizers (J. Pippine, D. Locke).

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kris Hauser.

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Conflicts of Interest

Some authors are representatives of ANA Avatar XPRIZE teams that received award money from the XPRIZE Foundation as a result of their teams’ performance during Semifinals and Finals (K. Hauser, J. Bae, S. Behnke, J. Fishel, G. Lannuzel, P. Naughton, S. NGuyen, P. Oh, T. Padir, J. Park, and P. Whitney). Authors J. Pippine and D. Locke were employed by XPRIZE Foundation during the ANA Avatar XPRIZE competition.

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Hauser, K., Watson, E.‘., Bae, J. et al. Analysis and Perspectives on the ANA Avatar XPRIZE Competition. Int J of Soc Robotics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-023-01095-w

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