Meta avatar robot cafe, a project of the Department of Home Electronics, was nominated as a finalist for the Laval Virtual Award 2022, which recognizes world-class VR content.

 It has been selected as a finalist for the Laval Virtual Award in the Services category this year. The project also participated in Laval Virtual ReVolution in a competition category and was selected as one of 10 exhibited proposals in the #Research category, which attracts world-class VR research. The results were demonstrated online from Japan at Laval Virtual 2022 held in Laval, France, from Apr. 12th to Apr. 14th, 2022.

The project was undertaken by Hiroki Nomura, Nobuaki Hosoda, and Tsukuto Yamada in their third year, and Ryoma Kawamura in his fourth year. Mr. Nomura and his team worked on the development of the Meta avatar robot cafe in collaboration with OryLab Inc., the University of Tokyo and Meiji University. Meta avatar robot cafe is a cafe that fuses cyberspace and physical space to create new encounters. They will create a place where people with disabilities who have difficulty going outside can freely switch between their physical and virtual bodies and ensure their presence and feel the warmth with each other. As a new application for the alter-ego robot café being developed by OryLab Inc., we have introduced a body augmentation system that enables interaction and an AR avatar that augments spatial sensation.

This project is conducted in cooperation with the OryLab Inc., and the Niiyama Lab. of the University of Tokyo and Meiji University. The contents of the exhibition have been introduced in various media including French public broadcasting.