In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Katsu Yamane, Senior Research Scientist at Disney, about robotics in Disney. Yamane discusses Disney’s history with robots, how Disney currently uses Robots, how designing robots at Disney is different than in academia or industry, a realistic robot simulator used by Disney’s animators, and on becoming a Disney Research “Imagineer.”

Katsu Yamane

Katsu received his PhD in mechanical engineering from University of Tokyo in 2002. Following postdoctoral work at Carnegie Mellon University from 2002 to 2003, he was a faculty member at University of Tokyo until he joined Disney Research, Pittsburgh, in October 2008. His main research area is humanoid robot control and motion synthesis, in particular methods involving human motion data and dynamic balancing. He is also interested in developing algorithms for creating character animation. He has always been fascinated by the way humans control their bodies, which led him to the research on biomechanical human modeling and simulation to understand human sensation and motor control.

Links

• Download mp3 (9.1MB)
• Subscribe to Robots using iTunes
• Subscribe to Robots using RSS

The Orlando Sentinel reported that the Walt Disney Company filed for three patents involving flying entertainment robots , a growing segment in the emerging service robotics industry.

One of those patents involves a multi-drone system flying projection screens for nighttime displays, hence the Disney Imagineer word creation for “floating pixels, flixels.”

Earlier we reported that Robotic Arts, a Las Vegas designer and integrator of robots used for entertainment purposes, was working with Royal Caribbean International, a large cruise ship company, to robotically position projection screens in a theater to give special effects.

The 2nd patent application involves positioning the flexible projection screens within a specific air space, in effect, the software/piloting side of the display. Both patents could be seen as enabling a high-tech digital fireworks show, or some other type of show, without the pyrotechnics, or with some combination of the two processes.

The 3rd patent would use multiple drones tethered to balloons or super-large puppets to make them move and walk as the drones control the puppets limbs from the air instead of the present method of Disney workers walking alongside and pulling strings to make the puppets move.