It might come as a surprise that it ’s easier to make a robot that does a Captain America - style Italian sandwich pose while flying 30 foot in the melody than it is to just make one convincingly take the air around , but that ’s the realism . TechCrunchreports that Disney ’s Imagineering R&D department start considering that fact in recent years as the root park animatronics its known for began skin to keep gait with what audiences expect from the growing roll of character reference under the Disney umbrella .
Animatronics at a motif park have to be sturdy and dependable enough to run through their turn over and over , all daylight , for years . Imagineers have to believe more like the interior decorator behind the Toyota Corolla than the single trying to demote the intelligent barrier in Formula One . That does n’t mean they are n’t innovate , their introduction just need to be reliable . So Disney ’s animatronics tend to be heavy , complex machines that are firmly bolt to the ground . That ’s where the idea for bringing in a stunt double came up .
Tony Dohi , Principal R&D Imagineer , told TechCrunch , “ what this is about is the actualization we come to after seeing where our characters are go on screen whether they be Star Wars characters , or Pixar characters , or Marvel fiber or our own animation characters , is that they ’re doing all these thing that are really , really active . ” A featured animatronic character could handle most of the tariff for entertaining the audience and a more advanced , agile , and fragile bot could do something fantastic in the middle of the show to take thing to another level .
A newfangled part of the company prognosticate Stuntronics took up the task of building the stuntbot . At this point , the robot has advanced to the point of having a humanoid form that can swing from a rope , strike cool poses , self - correct its trajectory in mid - melodic line and land in a designated spot every clock time . It has on - display panel accelerometer and gyro arrays with optical maser range finding . And see it in military action is pretty nerveless .
But what ’s more telling than the bot ’s stunt flying is that its progressing extremely fast . In May , Disney uncover Stuntronics ’ predecessor , Stickman . It ’s a cool short bot in its own right , but it is n’t much more than a bunch of gear and sensors with a couplet of joints . At a length , the latest update passes for something more than human — a superhero .
Combining this tech withDisney ’s vision of “ piano robots”naturally conjures simulacrum of advanced Luke Skywalker and Iron Man humanoid becoming sentient and mow down visitors at Disneyland . ( Obviously , right ? ) But I ’m more intrigued by the idea of robots becoming doubles for humans in movies and bringing back more pragmatic stunt work . CGI will in all likelihood always be the tawdry option , but it ’s easy to ideate movie maker mixing in a little more tangible world stunt piece of work that can get extra dangerous because no one ’s going to give out . Except for audiences , finally , some day .
[ TechCrunch ]
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