animatronics
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Disney robot with human-like gaze is equal parts uncanny and horrifying
Disney researchers have built a robot with a highly realistic gaze -- and a horrifying look that could haunt your dreams.
Animatronic Queen Elizabeth I is one creepy but realistic portrait
Queen Elizabeth I is widely thought to have carefully controlled her image. She would sit for portraits only until her face was drawn, which she would personally approve. In her later years, it was important for the heirless queen to appear youthful. She used agelessness as a symbol of power. Conversely, other unsanctioned depictions of Elizabeth I have verged on the grotesque, so when artist Mat Collishaw was commissioned by Royal Museums Greenwich to create something to complement her famous "Armada Portrait," he went as realistic as possible.
This video will make you miss the heyday of animatronic puppets
Sure, CGI has come a long way. But there's still something magical about practical special effects in films. At Engadget Expand, we got a close look at some of the most intriguing work from animatronics expert Mark Setrakian. You've probably seen his stuff: He created the tiny, head-mounted alien that delivered some crucial plot information to Will Smith in Men in Black. He specializes in creating complex animatronics that appear surreally lifelike. (He particularly enjoys building terrifying robotic hands.)
Disney is working on more natural moving robots
Disney may not have much of a stake in robots at the industrial scale, but the company sure employs plenty of animatronics at its parks and films. So it only makes sense that it would want to build the most natural moving robots it can and encourage you to suspend your disbelief. Its research labs have developed a new method for controlling mechanical puppets, without the usual motors, pumps or valves. Instead the set up you see above (and in the video after the break) relies on pneumatic tubes and air pressure. As a puppeteer moves one arm, the other mimics it exactly, with no bounce back, stuttering and an imperceptible delay. The result is accurate, natural motion with impressive precision. That could lead to more convincing movie monsters, animatronic attractions without the usual stiff jitters and perhaps even more life-like fully autonomous robots that are less awkward to interact with. The company has already pumped plenty of money in to building more convincing robots, and has even gone as far as figuring out a way to clone human faces. (Your days are numbered, you have been warned.) Make sure to check out the videos after the break, because this is something that needs to be seen to truly be appreciated.
Disney researchers can now digitally shave your face, clone it for animatronics (video)
The minds at Disney Research aren't only interested in tracking your face -- they want to map, shave and clone it, too. Through a pair of research projects, Walt's proteges have managed to create systems for not only mapping, digitally reconstructing and removing facial hair, but also for creating lifelike synthetic replicas of human faces for use in animatronics. Let's start with the beards, shall we? Facial hair is a big part of a person's physical identity, a quick shave can render a close friend unrecognizable -- but modern face-capture systems aren't really optimized for the stuff. Disney researchers attempted to address that issue by creating an algorithm that detects facial hair, reconstructs it in 3D and uses the information it gathers to suss out the shape of the skin underneath it. This produces a reconstruction of not only the skin episurface, but also of the subject's individual hairs, meaning the final product can be viewed with or without a clean shave. Another Disney team is also taking a careful look at the human face, but is working on more tangible reconstructions -- specifically for use on audio-animatronic robots. The team behind the Physical Face Cloning project hope to automate part of creating animatronics to speed up the task of replicating a human face for future Disney robots. This complicated process involves capturing a subjects face under a variety of conditions and using that data to optimize a composition of synthetic skin to best match the original. Fully bearded animatronic clones are still a ways off, of course, but isn't it comforting to know that Disney could one day replace you accurately replicate your visage in Walt Disney World for posterity? Dive into the specifics of the research at the source links below, or read on for a video summary of the basics.
Alt-week 8.11.12: Robo-billies, quasicrystals and radioactive art
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days. It's not like we're trying to out-weird ourselves, it just, somehow, keeps happening. At least one of this week's offerings (we'll leave it to you to figure out which) will possibly be the creepiest thing we post all year. As for the rest, well it's slightly more palatable. We'll get uncharacteristically pumped about cycling, meet some extra-terrestrial quasicrystals and enjoy some art with X-men credentials. This is alt-week.
Stuffed Toys Alive! replaces mechanical limbs with strings for a much softer feel (hands-on)
It worked just fine for Pinocchio, so why not animatronic stuffed bears? A group of researchers from the Tokyo University of Technology are on hand at SIGGRAPH's Emerging Technologies section this week to demonstrate "Stuffed Toys Alive!," a new type of interactive toy that replaces the rigid plastic infrastructure used today with a seemingly simple string pulley-based solution. Several strings are installed at different points within each of the cuddly gadget's limbs, then attached to a motor that pulls the strings to move the fuzzy guy's arms while also registering feedback, letting it respond to touch as well. There's not much more to it than that -- the project is ingenious but also quite simple, and it's certain to be a hit amongst youngsters. The obligatory creepy hands-on video is waiting just past the break.%Gallery-162161%
Walt Disney World unveils incredibly scary, robotic version of President Obama
His likeness is so... unlike him, so incredibly, terrifyingly creepy (and yet still impressive all the same).
RP Spotlight: Pets can be more than decoration
In WoW social situations, combat and non-combat pets alike usually just take up space looking pretty. Hunter and warlock pets have many actions they can perform to help fight an enemy, of course, and for a normal gamer there's no reason they would need to do anything more. But sometimes, as a roleplayer, if you pat your pet wolf on the head, you might expect it to look up at you with those adorable puppy eyes; or if someone else pats its head, you might expect it to bite their hand off. However, with the emote system as it is, we can only type out custom emotes with our own character's name at the beginning of the sentence, never the pet's.There's a way around this problem, which is actually quite obvious once you think of it, yet roleplayers rarely use it, so far as I have seen. If you write the possessive apostrophe-S as the first part of your character's custom emote, you can make your pet seem to do something on its own: "Isabeau 's pet wolf growls and bares his teeth." It takes a little bit more typing, and it leaves a space between your characters name and the apostrophe-S (since that's built into the emote system), but effectively it lets you roleplay two entities at the same time. Hunters and warlocks can use the PetEmote addon to help make this a little more streamlined. Our reader Ellyndia, for instance, roleplayed a very introverted character that normally would not introduce herself to others, but using such custom emotes, she could have her Jubling walk up and interact with people first to get conversations going. Pets can reflect what your character is thinking but not saying out loud (by hissing or purring perhaps), or they can do anything that such pets in real life might do. Special non-combat pets such as the Children's Week kids, the interactive Animatronics, or even the magical Mojo, could all be especially fun to animate a little now and then. Certainly this technique would become very annoying if overused, but in moderation it can add a extra spice of humor, entertainment and even a touch of realism into the game.
Disneyland intros roving animatronic Muppets; Mickey and friends fear pink slips
The happiest place on Earth (Disneyland, not Las Vegas during CES) just got a little happier this week, thanks to a new exhibit called the Muppet Mobile Laboratory that roams the park and delights visitors with inane banter and sprays of water. Probably having nothing to do with the fact that the human costumed characters like to videotape themselves in suggestive poses while still in uniform, Disney decided to eschew flesh and bone for metal and silicon when it tasked the Imagineering studio with whipping up California Adventure's newest residents, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his always chipper, possibly speed-addicted friend Beaker. The two wacky companions approach groups of visitors in their remotely-controlled, cartoonish rocket ship, and thanks to operators monitoring embedded cameras, microphones, and speakers, are able to to carry on eerily-realistic conversations that incorporate actual traits of the audience members. The L.A. Times reminds us that the MML is only the latest in a long line of animatronic entertainers, from the Enchanted Tiki Room and Mr. Lincoln in the 60's to Lucky the Dinosaur and Crush the Turtle in the new millennium -- but Honeydew and Tweaker Beaker are the first that can be modified to entertain in almost any environment. Disney expects the new tech -- which enables remote operation from as far away as Glendale -- to eventually expand its stable of characters to include some of the Muppets who are too small to be played by actors (as opposed to mice, dogs, and ducks, which are just the right size), so next time the kids finally wear you down and win another trip to the Magic Kingdom, at least you'll be able to pass the time by chasing around little Chip 'n Dales or wirelessly hacking Kermit to tell the kiddies what he really thinks of that flaky pig.Update: Now with video! Check it out after the break. Big thanks to commenter John and YouTube member JLOatesIII.[Photo credit: L.A. Times, thanks Armando S.]
