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Text/ Zhou Xiaoyan

Editor/ Guo Xiaojing

Disney, which has nothing to do with the robotics industry, is actually also making robots, and has been doing it for a long time.

Recently, Disney Research Center published a paper introducing a bipedal robot designed specifically for entertainment, and detailed the technical details of how they made the bipedal robot.

（图：paper.Design and Control of a Bipedal Robotic Character)

The robot disassembled in this paper has 5 degrees of freedom in the legs and 4 degrees of freedom in the neck and head. In fact, it appeared at the IEEE/RSJ conference in Detroit in late 2023. At the scene, the little robot was babbling "spells" in its mouth, its legs could "squat" and it made sounds when walking. The whole image was so cute that it overwhelmed the audience. At the Nvidia GTC conference not long ago, it also acted like a spoiled child with Huang Renxun.

(Photo: Huang Renxun interacts with Disney robots at the 2024 NVIDIA GTC conference)

In any case, apart from the robot characters in the movies, "Disney" seems to have nothing to do with "robots", so why does Disney want to make robots? Does Disney really want to abandon its old business and cross over to grab the jobs of Boston Dynamics and Tesla?

All for the children

Robots have been a feature of Disney theme parks since 1955, when Walt Disney decided to develop a separate theme park in addition to film production.In the 1960s, Walt Disney experimented with placing “sound animatronics,” mechanical characters with rhythmic movements, in theme parks.

In 1963, Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room's tropical birds debuted, moving and "singing" to pre-recorded tunes. Today, in some parks, a Tiki room has more than 200 birds, drummers and magic fountains, and the birds can talk, dance and sing for guests while they dine.

(Photo: Disneyland Tropical Bird)

In 1964, Disney began to shift from "audio-animatronics" to "humanoid animatronics".Abraham LincolnThe first fully animated character introduced by Disney, he was like an animatronic actor, presenting the plot to the audience and delivering the "Gettysburg Address". Soon after, the repertoire of animatronics changed from a single person to an "ensemble", and the now famous "Carousel of Progress" was first introduced at the New York World's Fair in October 1964.

(Photo: Disneyland Abraham Lincoln)

But these electronic characters lack souls, and their movements are all pre-set.In Disney's subsequent electronic animation innovations, the means were nothing more than changing the characters or plots, or expanding the scale of "characters" to attract tourists' attention. In 1967, there were more than 100 electronic pirates and citizens with voices in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. These characters were like clockwork clocks, and after being supported by power, they began to rotate mechanically and cyclically, and some tourists even "drowned" after watching them for a long time.

Disney engineers are also aware of this. They found that "it's not easy to fool children today." As an important part of theme park entertainment, children's knowledge has changed a lot with the times. If the props are not realistic enough, they may lose interest quickly. For example, in the past, when going to the amusement park, simple mechanical dolls made children have a lot of fun. Now, if you say to your child, "Look, this is Mickey Mouse," he may stare at the doll for a long time and ask seriously, "Dad, why doesn't this Mickey Mouse blink?"

As a result, Disney engineers continued to improve the characters, working to make the animatronic characters more realistic and smooth.

In 2010, Disney reached the "peak" of its electronic animation field, and the animated characters named "A1000" were launched. These characters are more flexible. Among them, the "Singing Shaman" in the Avatar theme park is a representative character of A1000. She can flexibly sing and play drums at the same time. It can be seen that compared with the more static characters in the 20th century, the "Singing Shaman" has a larger overall range of movement from the head to the upper limbs, and has a better function of relieving stress.

(Photo: Disney Song of Shaman)

The production process of Song Shaman is also very complicated. Under this "Avatar" face is a series of finely arranged parts:

(Photo: Shaman of Song Under the Mask)

However, the "Shaman of Song" can only be "nailed" in specific scenes and sing specific songs. These "loop playback" systems that were once fun to play with are becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy children who have been immersed in social networks and the world of games since childhood.

In order to win the favor of Internet natives in the 21st century, Disneyland needs to change its strategy. First, it needs to innovate robots more frequently to keep tourists fresh. Second, these characters need to be more exciting and thrilling, or be able to touch a certain emotional point of tourists.

The "Superman" character came into being, and in 2021, Disney's "stunt electronic" robots came to the fore.

(Photo: Disney's stunt electronic robot Spider-Man)

The Spider-Man that "gallops" 65 feet in the air is not a real-life acrobat, but a stunt robot developed by Disney that does not require any ropes during the entire performance. Without the outer skin, Disney's stunt Spider-Man is a completely black mechanical structure.

(Picture: Spider-Man under the mask)

Spider-Man, who can fly in the air, weighs 95 pounds and looks like a humanoid robot, but the similarity is only in the shape. Compared with the more complex body, more sophisticated motor and joint design of the humanoid robot, the body material of Spider-Man is made of3D PrintingMade of plastic and aluminum, and countless screws, it is essentially just a "connecting rod structure" with a movable weight placed inside.

When this "connecting rod structure" is "thrown" into the air, the heavy objects inside can fall freely. Combined with the "slingshot system" designed by engineers and the anthropomorphic flight trajectory, "Spider-Man" can perform different actions in the air.

(Picture: The main body of "Spider-Man")

After completing the mission, "Spider-Man" was unable to achieve a truly "stable landing", but instead fell into a huge "web" out of people's sight. This is in line with the character setting that "Spider" should "fall into the web".

Although stunt robots can perform cool and high-risk actions, they can only be viewed from a distance if they want to maintain a sense of realism. In addition, there is actually no essential difference between stunt robots and Disney's early electronic animation robots - they can only operate within the established action tracks planned for them by engineers, and have not gotten rid of the stigma of "single" performance.

So, Disney engineers moved "Wall-E" from animation to reality, thus giving birth to a new generation of Disney robots that can interact with humans.

It is said that this "Wall-E" robot was made based on the prototype of the character WALL-E in the film "Wall-E" released by Disney and produced by Pixar in 2008. Although their appearance is not exactly the same, their overall image and temperament are roughly similar.

(Photo: Walt Disney's robot character Wall-E from "Wall-E")

It can be seen that in the 70 years since Disney was founded, Disney has continuously tried to transform and iterate the robots in theme parks, because "theme parks" are the highlight of Disney's business. In order to maintain this position, Disney needs to continue to look for new growth points, and robots are one of the breakthroughs for Disney theme parks.

70 Years of Disneyland Challenges

From Q4 2022 to Q2 2024, the "experience" segment's revenue has long accounted for about 36% of Disney's total revenue, including theme park business.

But looking back at Disney’s financial reports over the past two years, the “experience” segment has been in a long-term downward trend year-on-year, falling from 20.7% in Q1 2023 to 6.9% in Q1 2024. Although the “experience” segment’s revenue in Q2 2024 (US$8.393 billion) increased by 9.8% year-on-year from Q2 2023 (US$7.646 billion), it fell by 8.1% from Q1 2024 (US$9.132 billion).

Disney's 2024 Q2 financial report shows that Parks & Experiences' domestic revenue increased by about 10% year-on-year, but the report also mentioned that "the increase in domestic park and experience operating income is due toWalt Disney World ResortandDisney Cruise LineThe performance growth was partly due toDisneyland Resort's performance declinesoffset.”

It can be seen that the performance of Disneyland Resort in Q2 was not good. This may also be the reason that inspired Disney to quickly explore a "new species" to attract tourists' attention, and highly interactive robots may be their key option.

How can we create a more realistic park "character" that no longer just "stiffly" performs looping actions?

In 2018, Disney launchedProject KiwiThe purpose of the project is to present vivid little characters in front of the audience and create a two-legged robot that can interact with tourists.From here on, Disney truly opened the curtain on humanoid robots.

However, looking at the world, humanoid robot technology in 2018 is still not mature enough, and there are only a handful of robots that can walk. Atlas, the "ancestor" of humanoid robots, is almost the only one that can perform complex movements such as running, jumping, and somersaults. Agility Robotics, a humanoid robot that received a $150 million investment from Amazon in 2022, only began to optimize the capabilities of its Cassie robot in 2018. Cassie has a more stable gait and energy efficiency this year.

Compared with other companies making humanoid robots, Disney engineers face a more severe situation. Compared with industrial robots, Disney robots need to be more able to touch human emotions. In addition, Disney's character robots are very "non-standard". For example, an arm that can be installed on "Wall-E" cannot be used on "Groot", which means that Disney must take the "customization route", that is, to develop personalized parts for robots.

So, how to incorporate the element of "humanity" into the cold world of robots?For Disney, it is not difficult to make a pair of legs that can move. In 2016, Disney hired Scott LaValley from Boston Dynamics. Scott LaValley was responsible for developing the leg movements of the first generation of Atlas. He has the ability to replicate a pair of similar "sports legs" for Disney.

But the difficulty lies in how to make legs that can move, be humane, and have autonomy? According to TechCrunch,Project KiwiThe legs and torso you want to create are "capable of sneaking, bouncing, shuffling, and strutting," or even "the lower half of the torso can tiptoe across your office."

(Photo: Project Kiwi, leg development, Disney Imagineering)

Scott LaValley carefully observed the movement of human legs. Even if people were gently pushed or put their hands on their shoulders, they could continue to stand. This ability is the unconscious self-balancing ability of humans.Project KiwiIn terms of software, a new design system is needed to impose a large number of dynamic and kinematic constraints on the legs, and identify violations of these constraints through feedback mechanisms for correction.

In terms of hardware,Project KiwiSome customization attempts were also made in key components such as gear systems, actuators, and circuit boards. "The existing actuators didn't meet the needs of Disney robots, so they started from scratch," according to TechCrunch.Project KiwiThere are also plans to develop a new set of actuators that dynamically apply torque and add sensing functions to improve the stability of the legs, allowing the robot to walk safely on uneven ground. In order to package the motors and actuators compactly enough, Disney also designed a new set of actuators for the robot.Project KiwiA custom gear system was developed that allows joints such as the knees and wrists to share motors, enabling energy conversion between joints.

Thanks to the efforts of engineers, the "Groot" robot was born. He is a proportional replica of Disney's tree boy Groot in the 2021 "Guardians of the Galaxy 2". He is about 76 cm tall, can blink, stand on one leg, and his arms can be retracted freely.

(Picture: Disney robot "Guardians of the Galaxy 2" character Groot)

Similar animated characters like "Wall-E" are moving from the screen to reality one by one, and a "Westworld" created by Disney is slowly unfolding.

Conclusion

In the American TV series "Westworld", a group of adults vent their killing and desires without restraint in a high-tech robot theme park. But as the robot receptionists awaken, they begin to re-examine the world they live in and start a struggle against humans. Different from the purpose set by "Westworld", Disney theme parks satisfy the fantasies of a group of innocent children. In the children's world, there is no killing and no hostility. All they expect is to hug "Groot" in the animation world and pat the head of little "Wall-E".

In this world, the "Wall-Es" have no conscious awakening, but are still treated kindly by children.

References:

1.  Legged high-dexterity self-balancing capable robot actor

2.  TechCrunch.Disney Imagineering’s Project Kiwi is a free-walking robot that will make you believe in Groot