In a video explaining their work, you can see footage of the robot Olaf, true to its size in the movies, roaming around a Disney park and the lab.<\/p>\n
To describe it as uncanny would be harsh, since it does near-perfectly emulate pretty much everything about\u00a0the character, down to its subtle waddle. But you are left with the distinct impression that what you\u2019re seeing shouldn\u2019t be physically possible; you wouldn\u2019t expect someone with the eyes and proportions of an anime character to step in the real world, and it\u2019s much the same for a 3D-animated snowman. And yet here it is, waltzing before your eyes. You may no longer want to build a snowman ever again, for fear of it coming alive like this one has.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\tOlaf: Bringing an Animated Character to Life in the Physical World\t\t\t<\/p>\n
All that aside, it\u2019s a remarkable feat of engineering. You couldn\u2019t get something more true to the character if you shrunk a person and stuck them in an Olaf-suit. You can yoink off the robot snowman\u2019s carrot nose, and it\u2019ll gasp and cackle. It\u2019ll casually smile and wave at you as it ambles by.<\/p>\n
The robot posed an unusual challenge to the engineers, who were tasked with building no mere humanoid. It has a huge head the size of its torso supported by a tiny neck, and no visible legs \u2014 just feet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, they prevailed. With the legs, for example, the team concealed most of the lower limbs inside its snowball torso, leaving just the feet showing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But simply having the robot take short little steps wasn\u2019t enough. They meticulously fine-tuned its gait to mimic Olaf\u2019s from the movie, and in particular ensured it walked with a heel-to-toe pattern to make it as fluid as possible.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
To fine tune the robot\u2019s movements, the engineer trained it in a virtual environment using a technique known as reinforcement learning, in which the robot\u2019s AI is rewarded based on it achieving a specific objective across thousands of simulations.<\/p>\n
Perfectionists through and through, the team used the technique to reduce the noise of the bot\u2019s steps. No loud plodding for our stout snowman; after implementing some \u201cimpact reduction,\u201d the bot\u2019s footfalls dropped from nearly 82 dB in volume to just 64 dB. Even neck temperature was a consideration: since the neck contained a host of small actuators controlling the head, it was at risk of overheating. With reinforcement learning, the bot\u2019s AI system learned to slightly adjust its posture to prevent a thermal buildup, thereby preventing the illusion of animation from melting before our eyes.<\/p>\n