Wall-E the robot is here! Disney unveils new robot, uses RL to learn to walk, and can also interact socially

Dang, dang, dang, "WALL-E Robot" appears!

It has a flat head and a boxy body. If you point it at the ground, it will tilt its head to express confusion.

However, it is not WALL-E, the real WALL-E looks like this!

This cute little robot was developed by the Disney Research team at the 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Detroit on display.

This little robot launched by Disney immediately attracted people’s curious eyes as soon as it appeared

Extremely With its expressive head, two swaying antennae "antennas", and short calves, the child-sized body incorporates a lot of emotional body language.

Let everyone who sees it be filled with love and affection.

The difference between this robot and other small bipedal robots is its unique way of walking - it makes sounds when moving, making it feel like a unique little life

Sure enough, after the video on IROS was uploaded to the Internet, netizens were all adorable.

"It's so cute, love, love, love."

He is very cute

There are also a large number of netizens who want to take it home directly.

「I need one!」

「I Can’t wait to see it walking around my room!"

Let’s see how this little robot does next It was created

The Journey to the Birth of Disney’s Little Robot

Programming robots to express emotional movements is Disney’s specialty.

In 1971, Disney World’s Hall of Presidents began using animated robotics technology

But as robots became more advanced and mobile Even stronger, it is increasingly difficult for robot designers and robot animators to develop affective behaviors that both exploit and are compatible with real-world constraints.

Disney Research has spent the past year developing a new system that leverages reinforcement learning techniques to transform animators’ imaginations into expressive movements

These actions are powerful enough to work in almost any venue, whether at the International Conference on Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IROS), at a Disney theme park, or in the woods of Switzerland.... ..

The function of this new system is to allow robots to show more emotions and expressions, thereby making them more attractive and useful in different situations

This The robot was developed by a Disney research team in Zurich, led by Moritz Bächer. It is mainly manufactured through 3D printing, using modular hardware and actuators

This design allows it to be developed and improved very quickly, from initial concept to on-board As seen in the video, it was completed in less than a year.

This robot has a four-degree-of-freedom head that can look up, down, left, and right, and tilt.

In addition, it has a five-degree-of-freedom leg with a hip joint, allowing it to walk while maintaining dynamic balance

This enables the robot to perform more complex actions and interactions with higher flexibility.

“Most robotics scientists are focused on getting their bipedal robots to reliably walk,” said Morgan Pope, a research scientist at Disney.

At Disney, that’s not enough. Our robots need to have the ability to walk, jump, trot, or roam gracefully to deliver the emotions we need

Disney has professional animators who are good at expressing emotions through movement, as well as roboticists who are good at building mechanical systems.

“What we’re trying to bring to these robots actually stems from our history of character animation,” explains Michael Hopkins, Disney’s chief development engineer.

"We have an animator on our team and together we are able to leverage their knowledge and our technical expertise to create the best possible performance."

Creating an effective robot character requires combining the talents of an animator and a roboticist

This is a fairly time-consuming process that involves a lot of experimentation and errors to ensure the robot communicates the animator's intent without falling over.

Bächer explains: “Typically, animation tools do not have built-in physics engines, which makes it difficult for artists to design animations that work well in the real world.”

"It's not just about walking. Walking is just one of the inputs to a reinforcement learning system, but another important input is how it walks," Pope added.

To bridge this gap, Disney Research developed a system based on reinforcement learning

The system uses simulation technology to combine the animator's vision with the powerful robot movement and strike a balance between the two. Realizing the constraints of the physical world allows animators to develop highly expressive movements.

These artists want their imagined movements to come to life as close to the physical limits of robots as possible

Disney’s assembly line can Training a robot on a new behavior on a PC can take years of training in just a few hours

According to Bächer, this allows Disney to develop new robot characters The time required was shortened from years to months

#########In addition, reinforcement learning makes the movements produced by small robots extremely stable. ######

This system developed by Disney has the ability to repeatedly train movements, and can also fine-tune aspects such as motor performance, mass distribution, and friction between the robot and the ground

The content is rewritten as follows: This system can ensure that no matter what situation the robot encounters in the real world, it knows how to deal with it and can show corresponding emotions. It’s very important for a robot to maintain its own personality

Next destination

Disney’s Researchers are proud to say that although this little robot is very cute, what is more important is the system it relies on

This system makes the little robot so lively and cute, and it is also the future journey of Disney A promising first step in

Disney’s next plan is to use this technology to develop more physical robot characters and push the envelope with faster, more dynamic movements.

While the little robot doesn't have an official name yet, Disney says it's just a prelude to more animated robots to come.

It’s really exciting.

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