Scott Gustin via Twitter
Typically, communicating with a droid would be limited to sci-fi movies. However, with a sprinkle of magic and a major dose of advanced robotics, Disney is bringing the experience to Disneyland.
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Last fall, Disneyland first tested the free-roaming BD-X droids in the Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland Park. The droids quickly stole guests’ hearts with their cute mannerisms — brought to life with highly expressive motions, as seen in the video below.
This week Disney announced that the droids are reappearing in Disneyland for the Season of the Force, a Star Wars seasonal celebration in Disneyland that begins April 5 and ends June 2.
These droids are designed to emote and move in a way that resembles a small child. To create these motions, the robots are brought to a simulation lab where they learn the motions created by animators, according to Moritz Bacher, associate lab director at Disney Research.
Then, to get the two-legged robots to learn the behavior, they are rewarded when they closely follow the motions the animator designated motions, added Bacher. This process is known as reinforcement learning, a method often used to train robots and machine learning models.
OpenAI’s notorious chatbot, ChatGPT, was trained using a similar method, Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), which fine-tunes the model via human feedback.
Another key component in bringing these “duckling robots” to life is to develop their walking movements in a way that makes them seem like they are happily bouncing around the park — which requires a significant amount of balance.
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Park-goers are reacting excitedly, already taking to X (formerly Twitter) to share their in-the-park interactions with the droids, as seen below in the video of the droids partaking in a little dance routine.
Beyond Disney parks, it is an exciting time for robotics. Just this week, a report citing insider sources shared that Apple is working on two AI-powered home robots. One of the robots would be a mobile assistant that follows users around to help with everyday tasks, bringing a droid-like home robot closer to reality.