Disney's New Bipedal Robot for Theme Parks Combining Animation and Technology

On July 20, TapTechNews reported that the Disney research team has designed and fabricated a brand-new bipedal robot that can traverse unstructured terrains such as slopes and steps in theme parks.

Disney hopes to design and program a walking character capable of these unique gaits and characteristics through this bipedal robot project, combining procedural animation, modular hardware, and reinforcement learning.

This bipedal robot is somewhat similar to the protagonist Wall-E in the 2008 movie 'WALL-E', except with a flat head and a square body.

Disney stated that the design focus of this project is the character-driven mechanical characteristics, putting forward a control architecture based on reinforcement learning to robustly execute artistic actions conditioned on command signals.

When the bipedal robot moves, these command signals are generated by the animation engine, which synthesizes and mixes multiple animation sources to form an intuitive operator interface enabling real-time performance of the robot.

Disney said that this robot system can shape a credible robot character and pave the way for enhancing human-robot interaction in the field of entertainment robots and other areas.