Star Wars BD-1 Like Robot Makes Debut in New Adorable Video from Walt Disney Imagineering. 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), in Detroit, a Disney Research team presented a brand new robotic character during their evening keynote address.
The adorable robot packs an enormous amount of expression into its child-size body, from its highly expressive head and two wiggly antennae to its stubby little legs. But what sets this robot apart from other small bipeds is how it walks—it’s full of personality, emoting as it moves in a way that makes it seem uniquely alive.
“Designing a bipedal robotic character with an impeccable balance is impressive, but simply isn’t enough when you consider Disney characters strut, prance, sneak, tromp, shuffle, hustle, saunter, or meander. Disney Research recently unveiled a new robotic character prototype that combines procedural animation, modular hardware, and reinforcement learning to be able to design and program a walking character capable of these unique gaits and traits.
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Even more impressive? They can do this within months, not years! The ability to have a new robot design learn to imitate artistic motion in a simulation environment before it’s being built advances Imagineering’s innovation pipeline … and we can’t wait to see what more can be done with this exploration!”
Unveiled at the IEEE IROS conference in Detroit last week, this new, unnamed robot is clearly based on the BD-1 designed for 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order video game, developed by Respawn Entertainment.
Like BD-1, it’s got a fairly compact, boxy little body, with a pair of stumpy, bird-like reverse legs, a flattish head with eyes, a temple-mounted flashlight, and a little pair of antennae. The head is capable of a wide range of articulation, and here’s where a lot of the personality comes in.
“Most roboticists are focused on getting their bipedal robots to reliably walk,” says Disney research scientist Morgan Pope, who helped present the robot on stage. “At Disney, that might not be enough—our robots may have to strut, prance, sneak, trot, or meander to convey the emotion that we need them to.” Disney has animators who are experts in making characters convey all of those emotions (and more) through movement, as well as roboticists who are experts in building mechanical systems. “What we try to bring to these kinds of robots is born from our history of character animation,” explains Michael Hopkins, a principal R&D engineer at Disney. “We have an animator embedded in our team, and together, we’re able to leverage their knowledge and our technical expertise to create the best performance we can.”
The question becomes when and where can we see these creations inside a Disney Park. We have seen, just in the past two years, Disney show off new innovations like this. Last Year at the SXSW conference, and then again at Destination D23 and D23 Expo.
The next steps on Disney’s journey involve using this technique to develop more physical robotic characters, and pushing the limits of what’s possible with faster and more dynamic motions. “We want to see what happens when we get to those limits,” says Disney research scientist Espen Knoop, “and learn what we can do at those limits.”
As far as this robot goes, the character doesn’t have an official name, and Disney isn’t ready to comment on where we might see it. But based on how it looks and sounds, we have some guesses. And this one little robot is only the beginning—now that they’re so much easier to create, we’re hoping to see many more of these expressive robotic characters from Disney.
