Disney’s flying robot stunt double can pose just like a superhero (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Disney’s flying robot stunt double can pose just like a superhero (2018)

theverge.com

64 pointsTomte25 comments

“One day at Disney” is a show on Disney+. It’s a collection of shorts describing various jobs within the company. One of them is on this team, discussing this very robot. It has some additional footage and depth not covered in this article. It was my favorite episode of the series.

The stunts in the video all seem like they could be done by a human, I was expecting something more like a light weight humanoid bot with some quadrocopter type propellers that allowed it to actually fly and float through the air. For instance, you could have Ironman flying high over the park and make it look convincing, especially with properly placed speakers.

It might not look right if a stiff breeze blew Iron Man out of the park

Couldn’t the same thing happen to one of these bots? Blown off their trajectory

I would imagine that the insurance premiums associated with having a human employee doing these stunts could be substantial. Also, consider the bad publicity if a human employee was seriously injured or killed during a performance.

But a true human would make the performance more exciting to watch.

One area though where a robot like this would be fantastic would be some sort of roller coaster ride where you would be able to see a superhero fly up with you and then dive at certain points in the ride. Just gotta figure out how to reset it automatically.

If you want to try this at home, check out MIT 6.832 Underactuated Robotics, taught by Russ Tedrake. Lectures available on Youtube.

Sumulating systems similar to the acrobat robot are homeworks. I think all tbe tools are available open source.

Speaking for myself, I would need the fundamentals of animatronics first (like, if I'm making a simple animatronic puppet, how do I design mechanisms to open and close the mouth or turn the neck?). Assuming I am well versed in control systems, electronics, and have a solid grasp of torque, gear ratios etc, where would I go from there? Under-actuated robotics are like a step 2. Hell, even robotics 101 seems like a step 2, since it focuses on the control systems quite a lot, I'm talking about "how do I build it?" and "what is a four-bar linkage good for?". These courses always focus on modelling a real robot and controlling it, I'm interested in designing the mechanics of the thing.

Fair enough. 6.832 is an advanced course.

Building simple kits is always a good way to get going. You learn by seeing how someone else solved the problem, and add that to your bag of tricks. The Pololu Romi chassis is not a terrible place to start. The wheels have (kinda coarse) encoders, so you can at least get some decent control going. Even simpler robots can be built by modifying hobby servos for continuous rotation. Pick a simple challenge, like "Drive around on a table without falling off.", that is a decent robot "Hello, World!". (And it isn't as easy as it sounds.)

If there is a robot club near by, check it out.

http://underactuated.csail.mit.edu/Spring2020/

Simulating is just so disappointing compared to having an actual physical thing move around though..

Simulation has its benefits. My advice to all newbies at the robot club is: "Your first robot should be low enough mass that a missing semi-colon does not punch a hole in your living room wall."

I think this is going to end up being one of the coolest additions to the parks in recent years. If you haven't seen, they're applying this at Disneyland in the Avengers Campus area to have a "live action" Spiderman flying overhead: https://www.disneytouristblog.com/stuntronics-spider-man-ave...

Same videos as the original post

There is an additional video with the robot dressed as Spiderman.

Did you even click the link?

Does this mean that robots like this will be cheaper to produce than CGI?

Probably not, even though you get a lot of physics “computation” for free, simply because you’re managing physical stuff that gets dirty, jams, needs lubrication, can be stolen etc.

OTOH it’s the only way to do headset-free AR which is impossible with cgi!

At least the physics look better. Much of the current CGI looks weightless and frictionless, like walking in ice. I guess that it looks more real than CGI because is real and real forces act over the robots.

Don't know for sure; if you have a good 3d model you can pose it infinitely, plus when it comes to Disney or Marvel movies, most of the background / environment is CGI as well so putting an animatronic in a CGI environment doesn't make much sense.

Finally, I can imagine the freedom of movement is a lot less in these compared to CGI models.

FTA, "falling with style"

Funny, was recently at Disneyworld and impressed by the live-action Cinderella during the nightly fireworks/lights show. Was she a robot?

Do you mean Tinkerbell at WDW by chance? That's a real person, unless it's been changed in the past year. Zoom in on a quality video of her "flight" and it's pretty easy to see it's a real person (and surprisingly less impressive when you can see her more clearly--the lighting and costume looks weird).

If it's a show, it's likely a real person; if it's a ride, more likely to be an animatronic.

My guess is that they want to use something like this in a life-action stunt show to augment human actors.

Yes, it is possible to do this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com