Walt Disney Imagineering’s Robotic Olaf Appears at Largest AI Conference of the Year
Disney fans are excited to meet the brand-new version of Olaf when World of Frozen opens at Disneyland Paris on March 29.
But before the lovable snowman makes his debut, Walt Disney Imagineering shared a closer look at the technology behind the character during NVIDIA’s annual GTC conference.
Behind the Character!
This is one of the world’s largest AI gatherings, and during the GTC Keynote presentation, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang was joined on stage by Olaf himself.
He is a self-walking, free-roaming robotic character created by Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development.
The appearance gave developers and technology leaders an early glimpse at how Disney is combining robotics, physics simulation, and AI to bring characters to life in new ways.
Photo: Disney
In a recent interview, Kyle Laughlin, Senior Vice President of Research & Development and Technology & Engineering at Walt Disney Imagineering, explained some of the challenges the team faced while preparing the new Olaf.
Because Olaf is made of snow and moves in whimsical, nontraditional ways, engineers had to design systems that let him move naturally despite his unusual shape.
One major hurdle involved preparing Olaf for his role in the new show “Celebration in Arendelle.” To perform safely on a moving boat and a lagoon, Olaf needed to learn how to balance and walk on an unstable surface.
Imagineering solved this challenge using deep reinforcement learning. Through simulation and training, Olaf was able to “learn” how to balance on the moving boat. The training lasted only a few hours.
Photo: Disney
That training was powered by Kamino. This is a GPU-accelerated physics simulator developed by Disney Research in collaboration with NVIDIA and Google DeepMind.
The system allows Imagineers to run thousands of simulations at once. This dramatically speeds up the process of teaching robots how to move in complex environments.
Photo: Disney
According to Laughlin, Kamino is a powerful new tool for Imagineering as the company continues developing more robotic characters.
The Interview
Disney
Cllick here to read the complete interview and learn more about the technology bringing Olaf to life.
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Feature Photo: Disney
