Walt Disney Imagineering and Disney Research have teamed up to create a truly free-roaming bipedal robotic character for the Disney theme parks. Themed to a BD Unit explorer droid from the Star Wars franchise, guests visiting Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland recently saw the droids during a 1-day test by Imagineers in the land.
A trio of bipedal droids roamed Galaxy’s Edge as part of the Imagineering test which included the droids exploring and interacting with the land. The droids have “impeccable” balance and they represent a new approach to robotic characters by Imagineering and Disney Research.
Imagineering says designing a bipedal robotic character with the balance and abilities of these robots is impressive, but that they took it a step further by combining procedural animation, modular hardware, and reinforcement learning to program a walking character capable of complex gaits such as a strut, prance, sneak, tromp, shuffle, hustle, saunter or meander.
Imagineering says that the robots are capable of learning in months, not years, and that 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.
For a quick video showing the behind-the-scenes training and learning that these BD-Unit droids went through before debuting in Galaxy’s Edge, check out the video from Imagineering below!
Disney Parks also shared a look at the droids roaming Galaxy’s Edge during the recent 1-day playtest at Disneyland.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!