A warm hug, a reassuring beep – all part of Disney’s “clone army” of futuristic robots that will add another level of immersion to theme park experiences. Olaf is the latest character to be brought to life by Walt Disney Imagineering, waddling his way around the new World of Frozen land at Disney Adventure World theme park in Paris. In a new in-depth chat about the technology that powers Olaf, Kyle Laughlin, SVP, Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, shared a fun Easter Egg that pulls right from Star Wars’ clone army.
Kamino – Disney’s “Clone Army” of Futuristic Robots
While there is true magic in watching Olaf waddle his way through Arendelle, a herculean effort has taken place over the years in WDI’s Research & Development labs to get to this point. Not only have Imagineers built some pretty amazing robotics and software, but Disney has also partnered with NVIDIA and Google DeepMind to create an open-source simulation model to power the robots.
Here’s what Imagineer Kyle Laughlin had to say about the partnership, including a fun Easter Egg for fans of Star Wars:
It takes humans years to perfect our motor skills for walking, and it takes additional years of practice to perform acrobatic motions that only a few of us can master. Deep reinforcement learning is a technology that helps robots acquire such skills in a shorter amount of time — for example, a BDX Droid or an Olaf learning to walk in a stylized way in the physical world. To make this technology scale well, we need fast and parallel simulation.
Together with our partners at NVIDIA and Google DeepMind, we are working on a new open-source simulation framework called Newton. At the core of Newton are building blocks that enable the rapid development of Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-accelerated simulators. One of our contributions to this framework is a simulator called Kamino, which will unlock the potential of reinforcement learning for robotic systems of unmatched complexity. This will help us take a huge step forward in our mission to build robotic characters that perform in-character, just as we know them from the films.
Fans of Star Wars will have caught it right away: Kamino.
For those of you who are not familiar with Star Wars, Kamino is the ocean planet where the clone army was created for the Galactic Republic. We visit Kamino in the Star Wars: Attack of the Clones movie, and in other media such as The Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, and even The Book of Boba Fett.
Disney never seems to miss an opportunity to have fun with a code name, and using “Kamino” as the name for a simulator that uses thousands of simulations to condense 10+ years of robotics reinforcement learning into just a few months to create the perfect specimen is…ironic.
It’s a fun Easter Egg for a really impressive piece of technology. This technology not only powers the new Olaf figure, but also the BDX droids before him, and countless other advanced robotic characters coming to the parks in the future.
Disney says the speed at which they can create new characters and introduce them to guests is unprecedented. Disney is scaling bigger than ever, working to bring more emotive, expressive, and surprising characters to experiences around the world.
The roaming Olaf figure will debut in the World of Frozen at Disney Adventure World in Disneyland Paris next year. Disney says that Olaf will be part of A Celebration in Arendelle, a 15-minute colorful show, presented several times a day in Arendelle Bay.
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!
Never have ai ever thought I’d see a picture of Olaf walking next to Obi-Wan Kenobi on a tour through Kamino’s clone manufacturing plant.. XD but now that I have mybfaith in humanity feels oddly restored and I’m saving the picture to my phone…