Disney unveiled an animatronic robot with the same gaze as humans | Hacker News Reader

Disney unveiled an animatronic robot with the same gaze as humans

businessinsider.com

40 pointsafkqs23 comments

Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8_VmWWRJgE

Why did they have to make this look creepy?

My guess is an in-progress robot that's being designed to do a lot more than just eye movements and head nods and fake breathing. It's probably intended to have facial muscles and speaking at some point, so they're using one of their main development rigs for the demo

Haunted Mansion is about to get intense...

I suppose it's because if skin is added, the robot goes straight into the bottom of the uncanny valley.

Creepy was inevitable, the choice was Jason or Stepford Wives.

You can't go this far into the uncanny valley, without..it being...well uncanny aka creepy AF.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

When I performed at Disney, they were super strict about not taking any images of ‘behind the scenes’ Disney, e.g. characters with their costume half off, tinker bell smoking, etc.

It’s curious that they would publish something like this without glossing over the silence-of-the-lambs imagery to make it fit more with the Disney iconography.

These sorts of things are routinely published in journals, no? I’ve seen Disney animatronic stuff show up in SIGGRAPH.

Yes, not that long ago being a Disney Imagineer was like landing a job at FAANG for your resume. A decade of hollowing out their engineering department ended that but it's still a very respectable research house for robotics, logistics, UI/UX, and a few other topics.

Well there’s an associated journal publication about the technology - Disney Research is hardly keeping this under wraps, and they publish many of their findings and technologies. And in general this is a demo like we might see with Marvel/Lucasfilm demonstrating special effects, etc, and not really a spoiler about a Disney World attraction.

And from a Corporate Disney perspective this is good PR, particularly for the labor market (I am not sure many engineers think of Disney as a major tech employer).

The article doesn't mention why they're doing it - I hope it's for returning to their roots of real animatronics at the theme parks.

Universal went further down the 3D / Simulator ride route than Disney and it's fun, but it's a bit less "magic". In a world of screens, I want a trip to a theme park to be real.

It's literally the second paragraph:

"Audio-animatronics are Disney's animatronics figures used throughout its theme parks to serve as lifelike characters."

Here's a good Siggraph 2013 demo about "Computational Design of Mechanical Characters" from Disney:

https://youtu.be/DfznnKUwywQ?t=265

It seems organic, but still a bit slow on the head and neck movement. I honestly wonder if doing this "dry" without the internal lubrication of bodily wetness is going to prevent more natural quick jerky head turns.

Ok eye and neck movement look nice, now they just need to simulate many facial muscles with micromovements that define mimic......

That shouldn't be too crazy to accomplish with a bunch of tiny cable driven actuators hidden down in the torso to keep it compact.

Funnily enough, a quick search on cable driven actuators for animatronics leads you to another paper by Disney Research. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MARwhwXEVz8

Not too crazy to accomplish... mmm maybe a typical scientist attitude imho. Professionals who draw even just static portraits will likely tell you otherwise. With that stuff they will look like botox robot zombies for years :-D ...we will see..

These visuals just miss the horror movie soundtrack :)

It looks like it's perpetually falling asleep.

And we are well on our way to our Skynet future. I for one welcome our android overlords.

Here and now I have the west world theme music playing in my head. Now wondering how off the rails Disney would need to go to have a theme park like that :P

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