Walt Disney Imaging, which designs and develops attractions at theme parks such as Disneyland, is creating a bipedal robot. The robot shown at the IEEE IROS held in Detroit, USA, walks on two feet with minimal movement and takes a duck walk to bring out the Disney character that expresses emotions with its whole body.
Although the movable parts are small, the knee joints move up and down and the head tilts like a puppy, making it look expressive. The development team is said to have used trial and error as a reference to the movement of a pendulum dog so that the character could move like a character. Therefore, antenna movements express emotions like dog ears.
These actions were trained in simulations for several months. Since the main body is also 3D printed, it can be made in a faster period of time than before. This appearance is similar to BD-1, which appears as the main character’s partner in the game Star Wars Jedi. It is expected that it may appear in a live-action version of the Star Wars series without CG in the future, and may also become popular in theme park attractions.
Walt Disney Image Engineering has previously created audio animatronics at Avatar Tepa Park, Groot, a freely walking bipedal robot, and Spider-Man at Avengers Campus. This robot does not have a name yet, and how it will be used has not been decided. Related information: this placeYou can check it here.
