LOS ANGELES, Oct. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ANA, Japan's largest airline, had their Avatar XPRIZE selected as a top prize concept at XPRIZE's inaugural Visioneers event, which was held in Los Angeles from Thursday, September 29 to Saturday, October 1. The "ANA AVATAR" Team, led by esteemed scientist, Dr.² Harry Kloor (PH.D, PH.D), successfully pitched their ambitious vision for a future where avatars allow people's consciousness to be transported instantaneously across the globe and beyond. On the heels of its avatar concept being chosen, ANA plans to further strengthen its relationship with the innovative non-profit organization with an exclusive Foundation Partnership.

"We are thrilled that our avatar concept received such enthusiasm from the world's leading influencers," says Mr. Shuichi Fujimura, Executive Vice President, Int'l Affairs and Alliances, ANA, and Innovation Board Member, XPRIZE. "ANA was created to connect places and bring people together, to grow, innovate and to push the boundaries of success further with each step we took and now we are able to take the initiative once again and bring forth the age of the avatars. This effort wouldn't have been possible without the tireless work of Dr.² Kloor and the "ANA AVATAR" team. Now we welcome the next challenge of getting the "ANA AVATAR" XPRIZE competition off the ground and eventually realize our dream of avatars bringing the world together."

The global impact of having access to working avatars would be huge; they would revolutionize modern society and enable the free and immediate passage of skilled workers to where they are most needed, possibilities include providing medical care, education and rescue missions, regardless of distance, borders or dangerous site conditions. The "ANA AVATAR" XPRIZE potential for a beneficial and lasting impact on the modern world has been recognized and endorsed by a growing number of well-known scientists and influencers.

ANA also announced to the assembled 250 leading CEOs, technology innovators, political leaders, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists at Visioneers that it is becoming an XPRIZE Foundation Partner. With this year-long partnership, ANA will be the exclusive and preferred airline for XPRIZE and participate in a variety of events through the agreement period. More details on the partnership will be announced at a later date.

"The ANA team presented a compelling AVATAR XPRIZE concept," said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, executive chairman and founder of XPRIZE. "The Avatar XPRIZE will initiate a revolution in the way we work, travel, explore and interact with each other. We're extremely excited to move this forward with our good partner, ANA."

For more details about the "ANA AVATAR" XPRIZE, please visit our website www.avatarxprize.com

Other top concepts at the XPRIZE Visioneers event came from Deloitte and Caterpillar. For more information on Visioneers and the 'Ready to Launch' prizes, please visit www.xprize.org/visioneers 

About XPRIZE
XPRIZE, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is the global leader in designing and implementing innovative competition models to solve the world's grandest challenges. XPRIZE utilizes a unique combination of gamification, crowd-sourcing, incentive prize theory, and exponential technologies as a formula to make 10x (vs. 10%) impact in the grand challenge domains facing our world.  XPRIZE's philosophy is that—under the right circumstances— igniting rapid experimentation from a variety of diverse lenses is the most efficient and effective method to driving exponential impact and solutions to grand challenges.  Active competitions include the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE, the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, the $15M Global Learning XPRIZE, the $10M Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, the $7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, the $7M Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE, and the $5M IBM Watson AI XPRIZE. For more information, visit www.xprize.org.

About ANA
All Nippon Airways (ANA) is the largest airline in Japan by revenues and passenger numbers. Founded in 1952, ANA flies today on 83 international routes and 116 domestic routes. The ANA group has 35,000 employees and a fleet of 247 aircraft. In FY2015, it carried 50.8 million passengers and generated revenues of 1.79 trillion Japanese yen. ANA offers trans-Pacific connections between Asia through the gateway of Japan and 10 North American destinations namely: New York, Washington D.C, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Houston, Vancouver, and Honolulu. ANA has been a member of Star Alliance since 1999 and has joint-ventures with United Airlines on trans-Pacific and Asia routes and with Lufthansa, Swiss International Airlines and Austrian Airlines on Japan-Europe routes. Its Frequent Flyer Program, ANA Mileage Club, has more than 26 million members. ANA was voted Airline of the Year for 2013 by Air Transport World Magazine, and in 2016 was awarded five stars for the fourth consecutive year by the world's leading Airline and Airport review site, SKYTRAX. ANA is the launch customer and biggest operator of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

SOURCE ANA