Disney develops ‘stunt robots’

Disney Imagineering, the part of the company that deals with the design and development of Disney parks, has developed so-called Stuntronics. These are a kind of stunt robots, which can be used in shows, for example.

Two Disney employees tell TechCrunch that the Struntronics project grew out of realizing that Disney characters are much more in action these days. The project was a way to convey that action, for example in shows in parks. They started with a simple robot called BRICK, or Binary Robotic Inertially Controlled bricK. That was, as the name suggests, little more than a block that could adjust its center of gravity and land at a certain point.

From there, development moved on to Stickman, which is getting closer to a human body and equipped with laser rangefinders to determine distances, in addition to accelerometers and gyroscopes. There, too, the design process did not stand still, Disney shows different types that have been further developed and can, for example, assume certain poses in the air. One of the goals for the future is to prevent the so-called uncanny valley effect, also known as the creepy valley.