How Disney Designed a Robotic Spider-Man | WIRED

The stunts we love to watch in movies like 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' usually rely on a combination of green screen, stunt performers, and computer-generated models. Stunts like these can be dangerous, especially when performed live...over and over. At the new Avengers Campus at Disneyland Resorts, radical stunts are being performed everyday by a robotic acrobat. Disney Imagineers Tony Dohi and Morgan Pope sit down with WIRED to talk about how they designed this amazing stuntronic robot.


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[daromo]

I went to college with Morgan. He is one of the smartest (obviously) and nicest guys in the whole world. So happy to see him having success at the happiest place on Earth.

[grimzler]

A moment of silence for all those people who saw this live in Disneyland and thought the Spiderman was a professional circus performer.

[akcromwell]

I love that their names are Morgan and Tony, feels very fitting

[TylerVossler]

This level of engineering is magic. I was really convinced that this was a real stuntman. So much so that when someone told me it was a robotic animatronic I scoffed at it. So impressive!

[ishraqtalukder]

Pretty surprising how cool we get robots who can literally be so Spider-Man.

[seismixx]

2:44 I like how they said "a lot of screws" together, that's a bro moment right there

[rarvind]

That's the type of robot i imagine when someone talks about robots taking over the world...

[dangeldoll]

I was expecting they would put cameras in the "eye"-space of the robot -so we would have a real capture experience of how spiderman see's the world while swinging around
a VR experience like that would be great

[sneekypanda]

In an alternate universe, Peter Parker was never Spider-Man because Tony Spark created a robot version of Spider-Man.

[karenhipp]

I saw this at Disneyland a couple of months ago with my daughter and her family. When she told me it was a robot, I was blown away. I studied art in college, drawing human anatomy, been in design my entire life and was mesmerized at how fluid and human-like this robot appeared. The creativity, the engineering, the physics, everything. Humans have such incredible minds it's just such a shame it's not ALWAYS put to good use. Imagine if it was!!
Phenomenal show! And, being 3 stories above me, I had no problem at all with seeing everything. Certainly a highlight for me at Disneyland!

[FinancialShinanigan]

Imagine the chaos if the robot overshoots and crashes on the floor. OMG SPIDER-MAN IS DEAD!

[ItsJessEdits]

I wrote a paper in college when these stunt robots were first coming out and now I finally know what they’re used for! What a cool thing to see.

[Gibbslx]

I would love to see them apply this tech to movies, cgi has come a very very long way but nothing will ever beat practical effects. That's the reason T2 came out 30 years ago and still looks better than most action movies today

[thomasford]

I could see these robots being used in actual movies as a more believable alternative to replacing actors with CGI for dangerous stunts. It could really be ground breaking.

[AllPersonalNothingBusiness]

Some of these folks really earn the money they make. This was awesome

[chocolateblocks]

The fact that the human civilisation is already coming up with such advanced things already like this shows us that we could quite some incredible things in the future. Perhaps even in just a couple of years we'd have a lot of robots similar to these or even better.

[markhollas]

"Only just scratched the surface" they say after creating a robot that can mimic Spider-man aerial aerobatics...

[dominic]

A kid at the park: “It’s the neighborhood Spider-Man”
Robot Spider-Man: “I’m peace of our time”
Parent: 👀

[Karideplov]

I love videos like this and the content of behind the attraction and imagineering story on Disney+. Imagine how many children today are watching these shows and are being inspired to study physics and become engineers. I wish I had these things as a child instead of some boring old math and physics teachers that didn’t teach me anything. Good job Disney…looking for your future cast members early.

[IstanaAnginWorldwide]

Robot falls onto people

Disney: We are trying to capture how clumsy being Spiderman can be.