Disney Unveils Expressive Walking Robot That Uses AI to Bring Animations to Life

Disney Research presented a new emotive bipedal robot at IROS 2023 that can walk in expressive ways to convey emotion.

The robot was developed using a new reinforcement learning system to turn an animator's vision into robust, real-world motions.

Combining animation and robotics is challenging, so Disney's new pipeline trains motions in simulation to create behaviors that work on real hardware.

The robot was designed and built in less than a year thanks to 3D printing and modular hardware.

Disney's goal is to create a generalizable platform to quickly build diverse robotic characters with different morphologies.