 Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening, everyone. My name is Colin Petry. I'm the team coordinator for the A&A Avatar XPRIZE and you are tuned into our fourth edition of the Meet the Team series, a webinar interview series and today we're meeting with Avatar Quest, who's a team from San Jose, California. I'm also joined by my colleague Jackie Mori, who is the technical advisor for the Avatar XPRIZE and just in a moment, we're going to introduce you to four members of Team Avatar Quest. Before we get started, I want to review a few things about the webinar. You are joined in and you are muted for this call in your off of video, but you can interact with us through the chat function at the bottom of the screen on your menu bar and zoom. And we also invite you throughout the call to submit questions for XPRIZE and especially for Team Avatar Quest, and we'll be viewing that Q&A section throughout the call and we'll be answering your questions live. So please come with questions and feel free to ask away. Avatar Quest is one of 77 qualified teams in the Avatar XPRIZE. As you all know, we have a very wide global spread, which is very exciting to know that in a competition that's set to connect people all around the world, it's important to have competitors from all around the world. So Avatar Quest being one of 27 teams in the United States, but one of 77 from 19 different countries around the world. We are delighted to have them. They're also a returning XPRIZE competitor. So they have some experience being in our competitions, and it's always a pleasure to have returning competitors who are here to help make the world a better place. So with that, I want to introduce Danny Kim, who is the team coordinator for Avatar Quest and who's going to make introductions to the rest of the team. Thanks, Colin. Morning or afternoon or evening, depending on where. So again, thank you for this opportunity. XPRIZE for us is an organization and a competition that's dear to our hearts. We, as a team or as an organization that partners with junior high school kids to create a team, we did our first kind of trial run of this three years ago, three plus years ago with the Ocean Discovery XPRIZE. And out of that, we were the youngest team in XPRIZE Street to actually win. We won the NOAA bonus prize. And obviously after that, the amount of interest from students was off the charts. And it's not just to, hey, let's get on a team to win. It was the collaboration and the camaraderie and the learning process that happened over those three years. And so we saw this as a great education opportunity to inspire young people to actually get together and compete. Now I'm going to introduce our Avatar team in a second and I'll pick it up. But I wanted to kind of get the framework of what we're trying to do here. It's not just one competition. We see the XPRIZE as an organization that we've kind of loosely partnered with because we are looking at, and we actually have another XPRIZE team doing the Rainforest XPRIZE. And they even sign up for another one because the interest not just from any one school, but from a variety of schools from around the world. It's always already started coming up. And our first test of the resilience of this team really came when obviously when we were hit by all the lockdowns and what we created because we knew this would be an international team or a team of kids collaborating. We actually created an infrastructure, an online infrastructure using online tools and whatnot for the kids to continue to collaborate and connect. And that has served us really well because for the last four to six months, the kids have been meeting online virtually constantly. Actually, the only complaints I've had from parents is that they're meeting too much. And so can you please not have two hour meetings every Saturday afternoon and then follow on with another two hour meeting on Sunday. So it's a good problem to have, but it goes to the zealousness and the initiative that the students have had in putting their energies towards solving a problem that truly is audacious enough. And I think that's one thing that we see a lot of things missing in some of the education is is we're not giving kids enough of a challenge. And what X Prize does is gives the kids a challenge that is on a global scale, you know, near impossible or doesn't have a ready solution yet. And so that is what's really driving the kids and the momentum around that. So what I'll do is I'll pass the baton over to Steven Heaver. He's our, he's our lead mentor and and he's actually our R&D person who supports the kids. So we are, we are the quote unquote adults or sometimes we do feel like children at times, but we are the supposed adults in this arena, but but we have in our avatar team we have 24 students. And one of the other thing I will mention is when we open this up in one school for for an application, we had over 120 applicants for 12 slots. And one of the things that I would joke, you know, with the parents and others, you know, trying to get set expectations is it was actually easier to get into Harvard than actually to get into this X Prize team. And the application and interview process was was phenomenally competitive, which again came back to the to the real interest that there has there's been on on the on this X Prize itself. So what I want to do is pass over to Steven Heaver who leads our R&D and as our team mentor to kind of describe the makeup of the team and then he'll introduce the student themselves. Hey everybody. So my name is Steven Heaver. I'm the technical lead for X Prize teams and also the director of research and development at Quest and Valley Christian schools. Yeah, as Danny described it, you know, and as you're probably well aware, our team is primarily made up of high school students and our previous X Prize. We actually we even had junior high students that that were that followed up all through the Ocean Discovery X Prize. And now we're graduating. So here who's on this call that when he speaks, he joined our team, I believe as a freshman and and now he just he just graduated this year and set it off to college. But yeah, our team is is is made up and primarily led by by our students as mentors were there to support them wherever needed and we just have a few different mentors on the team. Vanessa Martinez and obviously Danny Kim leads our team and I and I do the I do the technical side and we also have a project manager fan that that helps out with the team as well and leads a lot of the student directs a lot of student activities just to make sure if we keep them focused on the right track. And then in addition to that we have some occasional contractors that we use to help out with specific technical aspects that were not equipped to deal with at the time, but but yeah, I mean it's it's pretty impressive how our our students really can take the lead on these things. I mean, you know, the X prize isn't a simple task, none of the X prizes are easy, which is why they offer, you know, a large reward for those teams that can that can actually accomplish the challenges. But the nice thing about dealing with students is that, you know, a lot of the limitations that we create for ourselves. They do realize them, but they they they have a greater imagination than typically most adults have so so they'll so they'll rise to the challenge and just the nothing's impossible. And so. So with that, I mean, we have two students on today, Jennifer song and me here. Jennifer is new to our X prize team in terms of this was her first X prize, whereas here was was a the student team lead for the ocean discovery X prize. And as Danny said, we actually end up winning the know know a bonus prize for that, which, you know, was a huge, which a huge accomplishment but also very spurned on a lot of additional activities and and interest and and with X prize So I'm I'm sure that you have questions for them. I'll let you ask them those questions and and we appreciate the opportunity to be here and speak to all of you. Wonderful. Yeah, thank you, Steven and Danny, of course, thanks for that introduction. There's a lot to unpack in both of your introduction. So we're excited to hear more about the team and share that with the viewers, both live and post. But before we go any further on that I would love to introduce the students were on the call the drivers of the team. And so Jennifer I'd love to hear from you first. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your role on the team and and what the X prize means to you just so you can introduce yourself. Yeah, so I'm Jennifer song. I am one of the project managers for the vision systems will be basically deal with what the avatar can see and then what the recipient or the operator sees as well and I have always had an interest just in science and engineering so joining this team was a opportunity for me to really be able to use my hands and create something that came from inside of me and I find it interesting because there are so many students with the same interest as me and we can all work together to make this avatar that was once thought to be impossible to make really come true. That's really great to hear, you know, one of the things that you just mentioned is the, you know, that that idea of collaboration. So getting to meet students with similar interests and work together to bring something that you think and that's inside of you and bring that to life using your own hands. And that's really exciting for you to have that opportunity, especially early on, just through school and having this program that you are that you were able to get into. We'll touch on this a little later but I understand that you were one of the applicants and that was a little bit of a, maybe a stressful procedure to get actually on the team so I'd love to hear more about that soon. But here also who was on the call I want to introduce you. Say hello to the crowd. Who are you and what do you do on the team. Hi, my name is me here. I am one of the systems managers on systems and systems engineering managers on the avatar team and I'm also involved as the leader of our sister team the rainforest X price team. So my primary role is in management and I was also on the previous ice fresh team in an engineering role and so a lot of the people who are on the previous X price team, kind of took on management positions in these two new teams which our school is taking part in something that I found interesting about this project is that we're not really just one isolated team we're closely partnered with the rainforest team and so there's tremendous transfer of ideas between our two projects, more so than I think between most other enterprise teams because generally two teams in different X prizes don't interact so much that they even share the same facilities and have some of the same team members on both teams or at least team members that contribute intellectual ideas to each team. So that was, I think, an interesting differentiator between our team and potentially other teams or potentially even something that's new in this project compared to our previous ocean discovery X price project. So what I'm learning now is that there's a really interesting team dynamic around all of the quest competition or the competing teams. So, on one hand, you have very distinct teams that are working together but you're an example me here of some overlap between each team. What's the dynamic and Jennifer I'd love to hear from you to what is the dynamic of all the students working on separate competitions is it pretty much you know you're on that team and you're working on this project, or do you see some overlap between some of the work that you do in crossing paths with other students. So a lot of the team leaders who were potentially on the previous X prize or who have more experience have been kind of interacting with each other across teams and sharing ideas on how to best designs best management practices. Things like that, like I personally have been working with the team leader of the avatar team to determine how we're going to plan the avatar project, despite the fact that my primary role is with the rainforest team. And I'm in a primarily like a systems engineering role in avatar and so there's kind of like this intellectual discourse in terms of common problems that the teams each face like, for instance, both teams and rainforest avatar have to develop sensor systems in avatar it will be a haptic sensor system whereas in rainforest it would be kind of like an environmental temperature humidity type of sensor system but in both of these cases there's a need for sensors and a general understanding of how to design sensing and actuating systems. So there's kind of that shared knowledge base which we've been learning together and applying to our own specific problems. Very cool thank you in here Jennifer what's your experience been like working in the vision system part of the team and have you seen some similar overlap kind of what the year was just talking about. Yeah definitely so I'm more of I work more with like the smaller subsystem so I'm more like specific there but I have definitely seen the two teams come together and share different ideas just because it's kind of similar like the two competitions are pretty similar in terms of one one is kind of like a drone and other one is an avatar, both remote sensing so it's interesting to be able to share the different ideas as two different teams and come together and see the different types of technology that is being used. I have a question Jennifer what's your current thinking on the avatar vision system. What do you think you're going to be using and how how critical is it for the operator to be able to have that vision of through the robotic avatar. Yeah so currently we are using a ZED stereoscopic camera. So basically the reason we're using that is because it can automatically generate like a spatial map with relative distances so this is both useful in terms of like the operator being able to see where everything actually is and also if we want to do any coding in order to be able to have an actual map of the object so that the avatar can move around and also has like an IMU temperature humidity sensors and we can live stream that on a IP network. So that is what we are using in terms of camera on top of the avatar and then for the operator to be able to actually see this in real time and before we immerse in the experience we're using a HTC Vive so the VR headset and that also helps the avatar to actually become immersed in the experience and see what the avatar would actually be seeing while it is moving in real time. Thank you. Yeah thank you. So Jennifer you're one of you're a project manager of one of five I believe you said subsystems. Can you tell us about the other four and if you're involved in them at all are you really just specifically in vision and how did you come up with that subsystem system? So our team is mainly split like you said into the five subsystems so it's split into control, sound, vision, mobility and then haptics and there are system engineers that are in charge of the entire team so then they oversee all of the five subsystems and make sure each is on task and can actually integrate together at the end and then we have project managers which are in charge of each specific subsystem so then students in these systems work together and although they meet across the entire team to throw ideas around and cause we also work in the subsystems to kind of specialize in either software, mechanical or electrical engineering and then put all of these ideas together to present to the team overall and see how we can integrate all the different systems together. So is that the classification or the designation of five subsystems, where does that, where do those categories come from? Are those student driven, did you have that kind of set up beforehand, tell us how that was born? Yeah I think it was mostly student driven although I'm not too sure about this part but in the beginning when we were first forming teams, the different students who are interested in different sections whether it be like software, electrical or just sound vision in general we kind of had a poll to see where each student wanted to contribute most to and then we split based on those decisions and in terms of the five different subsystems we kind of determined that based on like importance of which yeah just basically the components of the avatar that made most sense and then we split it based on that. Gotcha, yeah it seems like it's a great way to structure the team they have five different subsystems you're able to kind of cluster into smaller groups to work together on certain focal points that you've identified and then there are times when you come together as a full group and you even have some oversight as well where there is a systems that is overseeing the integration at a certain point so it seems like a pretty savvy structure. Here you're one of those team leads that oversees all five is that correct? Yeah. So from throughout this whole process what's that been like managing the collaboration between those five subsystems? And how many people are on a full team? I'd be really interested to know how much wrangling you really have to do here. Yes, so there's about three to five people per subteam although there's a lot of interaction across subteams so it can sometimes feel like there's like the lines between subteams are blurred a little bit because of the interdependencies. As far as managing the various subteams goes, we generally will have one point person who's responsible for giving kind of like status updates or who's maybe not like so much a leader but kind of just a person who's responsible for being the point of contact for that project and so that kind of helps streamline the the information flow across the team. Additionally, each team kind of has a little bit of their own autonomy like during our, we recently had a week where we were allowed to come into school and socially distanced but still work on our projects and so many of the subteams came and worked on their individual projects during this during that week and there was a lot of initiative and autonomy across each of the teams and identifying the parts which they needed and getting the tools they needed and putting together the prototypes which they wanted to and so as far as management it's a lot of it has been managing communication across these teams and making sure that teams are setting reasonable goals for themselves and that they always have the resources that they need in order to accomplish their goals. But it hasn't been like a wrangling people who are trying to resist wrangling I haven't really been like getting that type of experience from the team so that is that's been kind of a fortunate thing. I actually have one of our prototype parts here which I'm going to turn off my virtual background. Sorry, so that so I can show it. So, it looks good. Yeah. So this is a prototype of a robotic arm with six degrees of freedom which we're making not finished yet it is very much a prototype. This was actually the sub team which is developing this is led by my brother who's actually also on the team. So he brought it home so I have access to it to show it. So yeah this these a lot of the things which we're developing a lot of the students are on our high school robotics teams. And so a lot of the technology is kind of draws from the technology that's used in the first robotics competition, which is the most popular high school robotics competition. So you can see there's like a lot of aluminum parts and some of these motors are the same motors which they use in the first robotics competition robots and so the that that's kind of off of the topic of sub teams here but that's kind of one of the like inspirations as far as technology goes for our designs is the technology which our team members are familiar with through their extracurriculars. Great. Yeah. Yeah, not to worry about going off topic where it's free flowing conversation and it's it totally fits into obviously what the work that you're doing to create this robotic avatar system. It's a little higher to back to Steven who I know you're the team mentor and you kind of overseen all of these subsystems and the systems themselves what do you I mean, tell me about your perspective and helping guide these students. You know me here said that there isn't too much pushback and hurting. So it seems like you may have a pretty, you know free flowing position where you're really just getting these students, all going in the same direction, you say more. I would say I have maybe have a slightly different perspective than me here. Now, I, in general, they are they are, you know, they, they've really, especially, you know, after our success with ocean discovery, you know, I know that really encouraged and empowered them through that through that when. And, and so now with especially with these X prizes, they've really taken the reins on this and, you know, it really led the charge in terms of the development in the R&D and the prototyping. So, so as far as, yeah, wrangling and and goes I actually don't have to do too much wrangling of them. They are very self governed. So they're the team leads like me here. And there's some others like Randy Tran or or Jennifer, you know, they they really they schedule their own meetings. They, they set their own due dates, delivery dates and design reviews and all that is done through them, which is great because, you know, being the technical lead on the X prize isn't my only responsibility with quest or with the school so so it frees me up a little bit to work on some other research and development projects that we have ongoing. But no, I mean it I mean what me here said is actually is is is correct they they really are leading the charge we definitely as mentors speak into them at times and and do our best to maintain focus, you know, there's with any type of R&D effort, whether it's students or adults, there's always featured drift, you know, so, you know, they started, you know, started at talking about what what if we put you know this type of, you know, this have these capabilities for the avatar or do this you know, I mean, you know, who knows what if you know if we weren't there maybe maybe our avatar would have rockets I don't know at this point but no but they they sometimes use have to pull back and be like remember what we define the objectives of the X prize we define the design requirements. Let's stay in those requirements. And so, so that's pretty much the extent of our wrangling is just to maintain focus on the core objectives of the avatar express. So I have a question for you and for Danny Steven in terms of how many students are in your in your program and I would like to talk a little bit more about how you got the kids through the process of becoming a team member, or even a subsystem project manager. It seems like there's a lot of thought that goes into this to make a successful team that can actually compete with the big boys and girls in the X prize competition so it's pretty impressive what you've done and I'd like to know a little bit more about the process of how students are accepted into the teams. Sure. I'll let Danny speak to the the except the application process. I'll say for our team teams right now. If I'm right now looking at our, our collaboration software that we use which is Microsoft teams. And it says we have 24 members and guests but that includes a few, a few followers and and other other mentors. So that's not totally accurate and I'll let Danny explain what a follower is and why we decided to go that route, but we roughly around 20 per team for express team but go ahead Danny can explain the process. Yeah, as I as I explained earlier the interest was extremely high we we started with the one school that we did the original ocean discovery X price. The school has about six or 700 high school about three or 400 junior high students. So we took from that pool initially and and again the application pool, even to get 120 applications was extremely high because you have to actually write a full essay. Answer questions get teacher recommendations of the process of even applying was extremely difficult. And then on top of that, out of the 120 for one team, I had to initially only choose 12. And so it and again this is not the only thing I do. I actually run all of the STEM programs and value Christian I also run under the CEO of quest so there's a lot of other things we're doing it so because we didn't have time to interview 120 kids we had to actually put them in a in a room of five to six at a time, and interview all of them together. And I can't imagine how nerve wracking it must have been for the kids, because if I was applying for a job and then I get in a room with five other applicants applying for the same job, it would be pretty nerve wracking so because we had so little time I literally would be, you know, rifling off questions across five they get to hear what the other person's answer was. They try to one up the other but it's amazing. I even looking through the resumes of these kids. I, you know, when I was in high school, I don't think I even did a tenth of what they'd already accomplished by the time they were freshmen in high school. And we even have a good cohort of junior high kids because as you know, a lot of these experts competitions, they're not a one year competition they go two three years and so I can't, I can't just have juniors, or even sophomores because they're that have graduated and left. So it's the one problem that most probably other teams don't have is that we lose team members every year to college. And so, but what that does is it opens up an opportunity for us to involve other kids so when when a cohort of seniors graduate they leave open a slot for leaders and other members and then we promote kids that have been quote unquote following so what happens is the 120 applicants or more because now we were the similar applicant pool for the rainforest. So now you're thinking, you know, we have 200 to 300 potential kids that that, you know, at least 200 that got to know, which is really heartbreaking. So what I did was I converted them into what was called a follower. So everybody got a follower account into our online teams infrastructure so they can actually follow the meetings. Join in on the video conference calls, watch the chats, but they do it as a follower, not actually inputting and contributing but they can follow the project along and then we actually promote from the follower pool. The kids that have showed interest stayed on, and then we promote them on to the team. So with that promotion has already happened over the last three or four months so that's kind of the ongoing process and now we're actually expanding the follower pool of kids beyond the one school and now we're having applicants coming in from London and Asia and whatnot that will start joining the team as well. It's an amazing process. And not many teams you're right, not many teams have to worry about their, their team members graduating and moving on. That's, that's got to be a real challenge, because I was going to ask how many of the people on this team are still going to be available when the X price gets to the A&A Avatar price gets to the finals in two years. What's interesting is that the seniors that are graduating were mostly all the teams leads and subteam leads. And so their goal when they're a senior is to train and identify the replacements. And so at towards the end of the end of the school cycle, we actually have a nomination process where they nominate and build in new leaders. They have a new set of leaders already appointed and assigned that will take over the the emptying slots. It's a great system. Yeah, that's a really great system and feeds into itself and it gives the students experience also of training working and interacting with what I mean there are fellow students but essentially you know maybe perhaps more of a workplace term their colleagues so they have that experience of interpersonal relationships working with others and you know moving that group toward a shared goal, which is really awesome. So I want to take a step back and I know Jennifer you were an applicant in this process, getting on to the avatar X price team. Danny mentioned that there may have been some a little bit of competitiveness in the interview room or maybe some nerves. What was your experience when you were being interviewed as an applicant. Yeah, at the beginning was definitely a bit nerve wracking, just to see it like Mr Kim and then the other mentors and teachers firing away at questions. But then, at the same time, like all the students, I didn't feel very competitive but more like each student was kind of giving their own story, or giving their own experience and it was interesting to hear what the other students had to offer and their past experience working in either like software or electrical engineering in general. Yeah, that's really great. Well, it's great to hear that you, you know, Steely Nerves did not have too much of a concern when you were going in on those interviews. But I can tell you're very capable and it's a clear choice that you were that you were brought onto the team as well. So you were just applying to the team right you wouldn't actually apply to become the vision systems project manager is that right. Yeah, it was just an application so you either choose to apply for avatar or rainforest. Yeah, and what drew you to avatar versus rainforest I know they're a little bit separate as far as the timelines go rainforest is pretty new. So what are your thoughts about jumping over to the rainforest express. Actually in the beginning what drew drove me to avatar it's basically like just, I don't know I'm personally more interested in physical like robotics, like robotic systems than average then reinforce which is a bit more based on like ecosystems. The last aspect I guess was the timeline as you said like avatar ends closer to my graduation date than rainforest. So I would like to be like more involved in the entire process rather than being involved in having to leave one year prior to the deadline. Yeah, there's kind of like a friendly rivalry between the rainforest and avatar express teams, the rainforest people like to brag that we had, I think like five times as many applicants or something and the avatar people like to brag that their challenges much because they're stepping in as one of the latest teams whereas the rainforest people have much more time. So there's kind of there's kind of like that kind of like friendly rivalry between the two. So yeah, I think we were one of the last teams to apply for the avatar. We actually missed the first summit, and we were the last entries before close I think I remember we applied a day or two before closed. And what's funny is on the rainforest were the first team to register and apply. Yeah, well you learn from that from jumping in on the avatar XPRIZE you know we're ready for this now it's time to get ourselves into the door and you know you really jumped into the rainforest XPRIZE which is excellent. Yeah we're excited I mean just on a side note it's amazing to have a returning group, you know I think the students change themselves but the overall spirit of the team remains as far as you know who is actually competing and working toward the systems. So being this year third XPRIZE competition and now running to concurrently you know that is that is quite a feat. So after your Danny after your success in the ocean discovery XPRIZE you know, did you imagine yourself doing more of these. What was your, you know, how did this come to be where you now we know you're running to at once. Did you envision it like this or did it sort of happen because of the spirit of the teams. To be honest when we enter the ocean discovery XPRIZE I had, I had considered that we would have almost zero chance of winning that it was just be a education process, and that I remember even telling my team let's just try to get as far along as possible. And that'll be a big win for us and then obviously years later we're on stage and we win the XPRIZE and now I'm thinking, you know, we need to share this experience with more students. And that's really was my first thought is, you know, the seven eight kids that, that, you know, lasted throughout we had actually 20 kids in the beginning and you know, either people matriculated or or or went on to other things but seven core kids stayed on the whole, all the way through and the life changing experience and learning experience for them was was off the charts. I think it's beyond anything they could have learned in in high sport junior high so. The goal was at that point is just how can we bring this experience and learning and not that we have to win. But it was really that process of going through the competition that was the real learning part and how can we bring that to more kids and that's kind of. That's that's really what the genesis of the way we're now presenting and signing up and running these XPRIZE teams came from. And I love that the spirit of bringing in other students is really crucial, especially after having success and working with a team to bring that to to reality. You know, that's fantastic what an excellent way to transition into having more student involvement. And speaking of which you'd shared some images with us that I want to bring up now is sort of a, you know, thinking about other students on the team. Maybe we can talk about who this this engineer is what he's working on, get a view into some of the other work, especially he looks like he's at home. So working on some of these technical components. So maybe here or Jennifer you can talk about who this classmate of yours is. Yeah, so this is Randy Tran. He's involved in the haptic sub team. So he is working on developing a solenoid system that will help to give a sense of feeling to the operator in their like haptic suit. So what he's developing right now is an Arduino that will control a solenoid through. So I was working with him on this remotely, because he was at home and so like this is in his home and so he had these components at home so I was actually like on a virtual call with him and kind of like there's kind of like this loop of like, I would ask him if he would report and then I would like to tell him like, okay, try changing this and he would report. Okay, then this happens. So it was kind of like, it was kind of, it was difficult, but it was also kind of fun to kind of do that remotely. Yeah, I can imagine that's difficult. You know, having, we've all been doing remote work for the last six, seven months now so I can imagine that the back and forth of, you know, doing that even just working on a, you know, a document, editing, but imagine, you know, working through technical issues on this type of board here makes it even more of a challenge when you're working that remotely. And that's true of a lot of our teams, everyone is stuck in their own locations, some have the opportunity to meet in person, have a safe distance and work together within the labs. But hats off to you to for making this extra effort to make sure that you're collaborating with others. It was also challenging because not all team members have a wide inventory of parts at home, like, for instance, like I was asking Randy, like, do you have like, I think I think it was like, do you have like a voltage regulator or a diode or there are some component that he needed and so he, he looked around for it. And you couldn't find it so we actually had to come up with makeshift circuits to simulate those other components which he didn't have so we kind of had to Jerry rake things a little bit based on the resources that our team members had available to them at home versus in the hospital, where we had almost all the facilities and components which we would need. Yeah. Yeah, so really just having to adapt to that, that entire situation. Yeah, bringing over to another one. Who is this that's that's working on this design sketch. So this is obvious she's working on a actually in this picture I can't specifically tell but like what she generally does is like she works on design sketches for various systems like the vision system headset or the robotic arm. So she's developing, you know, like a first kind of like image concept of what our manipulator or whichever system would look like, from which we can further develop technical drawings and engineering plans which we can later translate into eventually into CAD and then into a full prototype so it kind of starts out with a, it starts out with like a general idea of okay this is what we kind of want to do. And then team members like Adya will put that down into more into a more fleshed out kind of visual depiction so we can kind of determine how would this fit in with our, with the rest of our system like how would, especially from a systems engineering standpoint how would these different subsystems integrate and not have conflicts when we try to put them together and so that's one of the. And so this is one of the pictures from the summer intensive so you can see there's people in the background. They're all wearing masks and they're like six get apart and everything so all of the desks are also the desks, which you see are supposed to be like full sized desks but apparently like we came in and we found that these desks which we had been using in the school year actually been cut in half and had additional legs attached to them so that was an interesting surprise. But yeah that that is. So this is from the summer intensive and everyone's kind of working in their own little isolated pockets for safety in these half size desks. It's like it was well thought out. Yeah, we did not know that the desks would be cut in half but that was helpful as far as socially distancing. Yeah, I can imagine. There's one other thing that I wanted to bring up here which may hear you shared and it's an interesting demonstration of kind of the motion capturing system that you're using. I want to play this, but I wonder maybe after you talk to it. Hi, I'm going to be demonstrating the Lee motion controller. So this is the controller it's built around an infrared sensor. And you can see when I place my hand over a 3D model of the hand appears on the screen and tracks each of the individual joints. This supports two hands as well. And so it supports the movement of the hands the other hands are doing. You kind of see this is I'm running a diagnostic application right now that just shows a model of what the hands are doing. I can also create applications using an SDK that have access to this data that's being generated. So this is an example of a third party piano playing application. So you can see my hands appear on the piano, and I can actually play notes. So I'm not playing anything in particular here, but I can use my hands to play notes on this virtual keyboard. So me here, how are you involving this system into the overall avatar solution that you're working on. Is this something that you think you'll actually integrate or do you think it's something that yeah. So it's a lot of our work has already gone through several revisions. The lead motion controller which we demonstrated here was one of our initial ideas for how we would kind of have visual localization of where the hands would be and how the hands would move for for the operator so we could send that data over to the avatar. So what we're thinking of now is having haptic loves on the on the operator's hands with Piazza resistive sensors to detect the bending and extension and contraction of the hands, potentially coupled with this sensor that will provide the relative position of the hands so we kind of have. In the demonstration of the piano playing application. I wasn't able to really play any specific notes because the resolution was not high enough to where I could actually hit individual notes like I had to kind of it kind of played like multiple notes at the same time so for the high resolution. We're thinking of developing haptic gloves. With tactile sensors that can detect the movement of the hands and for but for positioning of the hands like where they are in space, we can use this because the sensor that's shown in the video uses like infrared to determine the position of the hand so we can use that for position determination and. We can use the haptic gloves. And just to kind of go off what me here is it actually one of the first prototypes for our team was a avatar that could play remotely musical instruments, because the ability to like play piano or clarinet or whatever instrument actually means that the technology also has the agility required to actually play and emotionally express a musical piece, and that can be used to do practically anything from like emergencies to nursing to remote surgery so that's one of the initial prototypes that we're thinking of and it's interesting how far it's like evolved our idea to this current avatar system. Yeah. I think it's really important that you think about the emotional components of this because what we're trying to do of course with this competition is connect people. You've got to connect people through that communication and that emotional components so I could even see your, your avatar solution being a way for someone to come in and teach piano to someone and to really, you know, evoke some emotional responses from the person at the remote location. To dovetail on that, we actually took applicants and we specifically advertises into our music and conservatory group. And so several of the applicants were cellist pianist and and people learning music theory. We have a mix of both engineers, as well as music performers who know the concept of bringing out that emotion of music and trying to translate that across so that was actually one of the interesting parts of this particular team. It's a good mix of both engineering and conservatory students. And and art. I mean, I saw the engineering drawings that the one team member was making and I actually did have a question for you about whether it was just stem or steam. And it sounds like you do bring in a really diverse group of talented students to work on these things and it's that kind of diversity that gives the new ideas and I expect to see a lot of really cool new ideas come out of both these fresh young minds and the fact that you're mixing all of these talents together. Yeah, actually, we have a third team that's not associated with an express competition, but it drew out of the fact that we have so many creative kids. We have a third team called the XPRI story tellers. And these are the kids that actually are artistically inclined. And so they're actually doing our website, doing our social media, but also, you know, looking at promoting the documentary doing and so they're doing a lot of creative pieces, above and beyond just their team but now applying the fact that hey, we're all together we're creative let's let's do something with that creativity and so there's actually a third team that actually is driving on its own, which is just our storyteller's team that that's looking at telling the story. As you know, the telling the story is so important. You know, we had a documentary created about our ocean discovery team, and it's being able to tell that story in an engaging manner that really engage more students that weren't even involved and so the part of the storyteller team is to tell the story of each XPRI team as it's as they're going along. Well we're really interested in seeing how that turns out and that's just brilliant. You've got another whole group that are totally involved with their own special talents, and then you're getting documentation to so expect to see some of that documentation at film festivals. Yes. Look forward to that for sure. I have a question about where the stage of your developments for here and Jennifer so what what are the next steps for the integration of all the various subsystems that you're working on now the competition is continuing on there's some time before the next submission and the semi finals or next year. So what are the what are the top priorities that are coming up next for those technical subsystems. So, each subsystem was able to get a lot of prototyping work done during the summer intensive some some subsystems determined areas in which they need to scrap certain designs or revise certain models. So now what each subsystem is trying to do is to develop their specific prototype. While keeping in mind the integration requirements that eventually it'll have to be able to connect to all the other subsystems in a certain manner and stay within the power budget mechanical constraints etc. Safety requirements as well, of course, so the next step for each subsystem is to develop a functioning prototype of their of their part and then after that will integrate them together into a cohesive whole prototype from which will be in a position to determine what the next steps for developing a test scenario would be. Thanks. Yeah Jennifer being a project manager for specifically the vision subsystem, what's coming next for for your team. Similarly what me here said yeah we there's a prototype coming but what kind of challenges are you working on now that you're your team is making solutions for. I guess because we're all in social distancing there's no way to come together. But it's funny because different members of our team actually have different components that we brought home from school or one of the team members delivered to us actually. So right now, like, for example, I have with me one of the cameras, the dead cameras, and then someone else has the headset that they're currently working on. So then what I'm basically doing right now is installing all the necessary software and starting the code for to actually be able to use this camera and someone else is working on getting the 3d motion or the three directional motion of the headset and integrating that with actuators to be able to move the camera on a mount. So that is our next steps and after we figure out internally, how these different components come together then we have to actually talk with control system and the other different systems to be able to stream this data back and forth between the operator and avatar. And I guess the summer intensive was actually very helpful in that the different systems would come together and kind of talk through how we'll integrate the system, even though we're each at home and working on a different component separately. Yeah, that's quite the challenge to try and do the integration when when you can't plug cables into each other. It's really software can only do so much and you know I really applaud you guys taking on this challenge and in the kind of world we're living in today but I think you're going to come up with some solutions that can really take that kind of collaboration and take it to where it needs to be in the in whatever world we end up with in a year or so. So, you know kudos to you guys for doing the work you students and for Danny and Stephen for leading the charge in this brave new world. Yeah, I like that. We're just almost at the end of our hour here but I do want to ask one final question to everyone, maybe we'll start with Jennifer on this. Aside from winning the grand prize part of the prize as you've done in the past competitions. What do you see as success in this competition as you move forward. In terms of I guess personal growth definitely learning all of these like different from electrical to software on these different skills that I'll need in the future for sure and in terms of actually the avatar being able to develop a technology that can really help others in remote locations whether it's like in emergencies or just in places that need more people need more assistance being able to develop technology that can help the world. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I think it was going off of that I think success would one part of success is definitely developing a functional avatar system but the other part of success would be that the student led team is able to develop their engineering and interpersonal teamwork skills and is able to gain exposure to how to operate in like a real world engineering environment into compete at a level which is not typically expected of junior high and high school students. So if people gain that kind of learning then that would be another form of success for us. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. How about Steven, when you think about this. Yeah, no it's just like with the shell ocean discovery XPRIZE one of our core objectives is to now is to leverage you know the inspiration of an XPRIZE to develop an ongoing educational program. So we with shell ocean discovery XPRIZE we ended up developing our own ocean discovery program that and then and that that it opens up opportunities for students to be involved in in the ocean and with to learn about ocean engineering and in ways that were never before possible. And just this last week during our summer summer program, we had students from around the world teleoperating up to nine or 10 or underwater ROV simultaneously and competing different little games or projects. And so, which I, which I believe is the first time that's ever been done before. So, the XPRIZE is very inspirational to us. We use I mean they are, you know, they're always such grand challenges so we, we always want to look beyond the XPRIZE and look for ways that we could leverage us to do these extreme STEM programs and that that are open to all students not just students of Yeah, that's right. I think it's little for me. So I think that it, the, for us to the success is already here because so you can see it from here and Jennifer. They're, they're, they're a small sampling of what the engagement is is really driving and doing for the students. And so to see that, you know, winning is just icing on the cake. Yeah, well, we couldn't agree more about just the successes of the team integration bringing students into the mix and showcasing that students are people of all ages can can demonstrate skills on on this level of engineering and competing. So we applaud you the students for for taking on this challenge and really driving it forward and of course the the team mentors and coordinators for for steering that and making sure that they're guided down that path which is really inspiring to know that students have opportunities at this age to really dive into to these challenges and technical problems. So everyone we are out of time for today's session so on behalf of the avatar XPRIZE I want to thank Danny, Steven, me here and Jennifer for joining us today and Jackie we appreciate you jumping on as well for the avatar XPRIZE. It's been a real pleasure speaking with you all and getting the opportunity to take a closer look at your systems, the technology that you're building and working on integrating and learning more about how your team structure is feeding itself and making sure that these developments are sustained. This is really exciting and we're looking forward to seeing what comes next from avatar quest. So everyone this has been the fourth in a series of meet the teams webinars. If you have any questions about the meet the team series you're welcome to email us at avatar XPRIZE.org to learn more about the what's coming next for the avatar XPRIZE. We do expect to have more meet the team sessions coming up in August so watch out for more information on those sessions soon. Until then we are wishing you all well from Los Angeles and hope you're staying safe and healthy. Hope you enjoy the rest of your mornings afternoons and evenings and take care. Thank you. Bye everybody.