Two-legged droids roam Disneyland’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge

Walt Disney Imagineers spent yesterday testing the latest free-roaming robotic characters at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland.

Imagineers have teamed up with animators to design characters capable of balance on two legs and highly expressive motions.

The droid is similar to a BD-1  companion/exploration droid. the BD unit droid “was programmed to be the ideal assistant to a researcher or explorer operating alone in the field with its ability to traverse all types of terrain,” according to StarWars.com,

Designing a bipedal robotic character with impeccable balance is impressive, but simply isn’t enough when you consider Disney characters strut, prance, sneak, tromp, shuffle, hustle, saunter or meander, according to a video description by Walt Disney Imagineering.

“Disney Research recently unveiled a new robotic character prototype that combines procedural animation, modular hardware, and reinforcement learning to be able to design and program a walking character capable of these unique gaits and traits. Even more impressive? They can do this within months, not years! The ability to have a new robot design learn to imitate artistic motion in a simulation environment before it’s being built advances Imagineering’s innovation pipeline … and we can’t wait to see what more can be done with this exploration,” according to Disney.