Disney Research Robot Can Juggle, Play Catch

Zothecula writes "With the aim of providing some physical interaction between entertainment robots and guests at its theme parks, while still maintaining a safe distance between the two, Disney Research has created an animatronic robot that can play catch and juggle balls with a human partner. Caught balls are thrown back 2.5 meters (8 ft) to the thrower, while the developers have given the robot several different animations that play out when it drops a ball. These include a shaking of the head, looking behind, looking down, or a shrug of the shoulders."

They'll be giving them machine guns next..

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll be giving them machine guns next and selling them to the Army.

Imagine the terror as a heavily armed platoon of robotic Mickey Mice advances!

Re:They'll be giving them machine guns next..

[Bill Wong]

imagine two opposing robot armies tossing grenades back and forth...

Re:

[StripedCow]

Imagine such a robot being able to catch flying bullets. That would make one heck of a bodyguard.

Re:

[zrbyte]

That robot looks like the Terminator, only that it's grinning.

Re:They'll be giving them machine guns next..

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Head is kind of a Lyle Lovett rictus. It looks much less T1 in closeup, though, but still uncanny. Say the following in a laconic drawl: "Nice night for a walk."

Re:

[Concerned Onlooker]

"Head is kind of a Lyle Lovett rictus."

That is hilarious, although I got the impression of a relative of Max Headroom.

Interesting that they made it a lefty. Also, from the photos it appears as though the computer vision cameras are not in the robot but rather perpendicular to the line between robot and participant.

and they will start shooting nukes at each other

[Joe_Dragon]

and they will start shooting nukes at each other.

joshua

Re:

[robthebloke]

That's ok, they're all taught to catch grenades! (although you might want to use magnetic grenades to stop them throwing it back at you....)

Does it scratch it's balls?

[slackware 3.6]

Gratuitous ball scratching seems to be a mainstay of American baseball. And why are all the camera shots center on ball(s) in base ball?

Re:

[muon-catalyzed]

No, but it might cut yours with a lightsaber soon. That is a Starwars owner's droid.

Re:

[flimflammer]

Hate humans? Because of their interest in animatronics?

A step back

[arielCo]

Maybe they are cutting costs, but this is an inferior alternative to their current, proven approach: Disney Lab Unveils Its Latest Line Of Genetically Engineered Child Stars [theonion.com]

Re:

[epSos-de]

Yes, yes. Disney wants to reduce the cost of having real friends. They always wanted to keep kids indoors, so that they watch more of their content from the age of 0. In reality Disney is harming the children, who develop attention disorders from their colorful cartoons, if they are exposed to them before the age of 6 or so. And now they want to replace real human friends with robots too. Keep your kids away from TV and Disney robots, if you want less drama at home. That is what the good type of parenting m

Deja Vu The Simpsons - Itchy & Scratchy Land

[dav1dc]

Is anyone else getting the weirdest sense of Deja Vu about the Itchy & Scratchy Land episode of The Simpsons where all the robots in the theme park starting going NuTz?!?! :S

It's all fun and games until...

[Anonymous Coward]

A bird flies past the thrower and the robot decides it is a ball and starts tossing dead birds at the guests.

Soon

[JustOK]

Soon, they'll be given light sabers

Re:

[Jason Levine]

It's all part of Disney's plan to take over the world. Step 1 was buying LucasFilm for their secret Real Lightsaber division. Step 2 is highly flexible robots. Step 3 is create their own army of Sith Robots. Please just submit because if that doesn't work, they unleash the army of Robotic Jar-Jar Binks'!

SImpsons

[biodata]

Wasn't this covered?

Great news for the history buff!

[mariox19]

I for one cannot wait to see Jefferson and Lincoln toss a ball. [wikipedia.org]

Kinect? Maybe.

[Dan East]

According the the video, they're using a Kinect for 3D tracking of the ball. That's pretty good resolution to result in high enough mechanical precision to make a catch. Also would reduce the cost of this project by a small fortune.

However, the article differs from the video. The article says "A Kalman filter algorithm is used to analyze video captured on an external camera system consisting of a Kinect-like ASUS Xtion PRO LIVE to track a colored ball in three-dimensional space and predict its destination and timing."

While the video specifically says "An off the shelf Microsoft Kinect with color and depth cameras is used to obtain the 3D position of colored balls."

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Dropped ball?

[PPH]

If it was true AI, it would have learned to look at the referee and claim to have been fouled.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

They'll be doing PIXAR storyboards next

[gelfling]

Although the animators will always be Korean slaves. Thankfully they can't take those jobs away from us meat.

Disney robot goal:

[tchdab1]

...to build a robot that can watch movies, then go out and buy themed merchandise.