The crazy thing about this event is that these robots are being teleoperated during the actual competition not by the teams themselves, but by judges with only one hour of training time. So we get to watch the teams quietly freak out while novice users run their bots into stuff

Finally, it was depressing to see the lack of diversity in the teams. From what I could see, out of the 17 finalists, a shocking 8 appeared to have all-male teams, with 5 more having a single woman on the team. Sadly, even in 2022, some parts of robotics hasn't changed much.

David with #TeamNortheastern’s 3rd place ($1M) #AvatarXPRIZE trophy! Thank you to all our supporters and especially ⁦MassRobotics⁩ ! More photos to come!

Huge thank you to our operator Peggy! #AvatarXPRIZE #TeamNortheastern

CONGRATULATIONS to the winners of the ANA Avatar XPRIZE. Today, your hard work and dedication over the last 4 years truly paid off, bringing the world closer to the technology of human telepresence. 🏆🦾🍾 🥇Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn 🥈Pollen Robotics 🥉AVATAR Northeastern

Sci-fi became reality today. Not 1, but 3 teams succeeded in their mission to unlock human telepresence in the ANA #AvatarXPRIZE. Congratulations to all the winners on this incredible accomplishment! 🦾🏆🍾 Which avatar is your favorite? All Nippon Airways 【公式】avatarin(アバターイン)

Today we placed 🥉 in the #AvatarXPRIZE challenge and took home $1M. Thank you to all of our supporters over the past 5yrs! MassRobotics @TaskinPadir Peter Whitney Northeastern U.

Congrats to AVATAR Northeastern for taking a well-deserved third place in the Avatar @XPRIZE Final! #IHaveNeverMetChunpengButBasedOnThisPictureIAlsoLoveChunpeng

For the Avatar XPRIZE Final, teams had ~1hr to teach a judge to teleop their robot. The judge then piloted the robot in the competition run. Teams were in the room in case of tech probs, but were not allowed to advise/assist. Here's what that looked like, from Team AVATAR Northeastern

Jonathan Bell Khoury College of Computer Sciences If you're contemplating a PhD at Northeastern's Khoury College in AI, ML, NLP, Robotics, or Computer Vision, I'll be hosting the first of these virtual information sessions on 11/8 at noon EST. Please join us!

AVATAR Northeastern Peter Whitney MassRobotics Congrats to the NEU team which took third place yesterday at #avatarxprize. $1M for 3rd plc is not too shabby! Very proud of everyone, esp Peter Whitney and his students for their innovative force reflecting hand technology. Paper: rssavatarxprizews.org/pdf/1.pdf

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Great journalism by Northeastern Global News! news.northeastern.edu/2022/11/06/nor… #AvatarXPRIZE #TeamNortheastern

A team geared for success! 🤖 Our AVATAR Northeastern team finishes as the top U.S. team at this year's XPRIZE! news.northeastern.edu/2022/11/06/nor…

Let’s give a big #stemsquad congratulations to FIRST alum David Nguyen (alum of FIRST Tech Challenge 8644: The Brainstormers) & his peers on AVATAR Northeastern for placing third out of 850 teams in the prestigious ANA Avatar XPRIZE robotics competition!

POV You just won the ANA Avatar XPRIZE 🏆🦾🍾 #avatarxprize #avatarfinals Congratulations Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn Pollen Robotics AVATAR Northeastern 【公式】avatarin(アバターイン) All Nippon Airways Northeastern University

#WeLoveColin

The fight for third place was neck-in-neck. Watch how the all-student team from Northeastern University secured third place in their final run at the ANA #AvatarXPRIZE Finals. 🇺🇸🥉youtube.com/watch?v=lOnV1G… AVATAR Northeastern

Thank you Draper ❤️