A New Approach to Disney’s Robotic Character Pipeline

Designing a bipedal robotic character with impeccable balance is impressive, but simply isn’t enough when you consider Disney characters strut, prance, sneak, tromp, shuffle, hustle, saunter or meander. Disney Research recently unveiled a new robotic character prototype that combines procedural animation, modular hardware, and reinforcement learning to be able to design and program a walking character capable of these unique gaits and traits. Even more impressive? They can do this within months, not years! The ability to have a new robot design learn to imitate artistic motion in a simulation environment before it’s being built advances Imagineering’s innovation pipeline … and we can’t wait to see what more can be done with this exploration!

[hyperion]

I've never seen a robot with so much personality before. The animated expressions it makes are so good.

[TheGhoul]

Love seeing robots have more interesting builds than the basic humanoid or cat/dog. These look inspired by duck/geese anatomy and have a bit of wobbliness that makes them look organic. Honestly fantastic work.

[noahboursier]

these are exactly the kind of beautiful machines i want to make

[TeddyLeppard]

If Disney could make these for home use, they could sell millions of them immediately.

[epicmickeymoments]

OMG this almost exactly like BD-1 from Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order!!! Please keep up the great work!!!

[derekcoppinger]

It's a BD-1 prototype droid! That's awesome! And I didn't know the imagineers had their own YT channel. Subscribed!

[sander]

Ok this is absolutely incredible - well done to the Imagineers engineering team for coming up with all that you had to do in order to create such a well balanced, dynamic robot with personality. Wonderful touches to the antennae, eye blinking, and head/body bobbing that help tell a wonderful story. These will be a delight to watch roam through the parks.

[sealy]

Great! Now make droids walk around Galaxy’s Edge.

[jakemeyer]

This is why the entertainment sector is important for tech development, and why the Imagineers have always been amazing to me. It takes a talented engineer to build a thing, but it takes an artist to actually bring it to life.

[djphredpr]

Imagineers at their best!!! We need to see more of this in the parks!!!

[reddcube]

The flashlight to look where you're point is such a good character moment.

[matthewviramontes]

Bro that's a billion dollar bot. You can't tell me every kid wouldn't love one of those things. Heck, I'm 41 years old and I want one!

[TheBigHeavyKevy]

Great design! I really appreciate the beauty and balance. It looks both natural and like a machine.

[grimsk]

The moment in my life when I most felt the power of an individual's dream was not when I encountered the concept of Tesla or the iPhone, but when I was looking up information about EPCOT. The inspiration and admiration I have for the concept of EPCOT drives my business today.

[AnthonyMeadows]

Disney just over here casually making real life BD-1 droids...

[ShaneHathaway]

For decades, everything has been going virtual. Now the virtual things are becoming real. So exciting!

[joelmulder]

Holy crap that is amazing. I can't wait to see this being used in a live action Star Wars project!

[markg]

That's extremely impressive. Use of the head as a counter balance is smart. Kind of like a bird with a long neck.

[adayinthelife]

Living in the future. Great job again Disney!

[timothysands]

Geez, the code on that must be insane. Sooo butter smooth and lifelike. I wanna see how they coded it. I gotta know if they used HD method with Quaternion matrices or just stuck with screw axis matrices or maybe something I haven't learned yet. Such an accomplishment 👏 🙌