Disney Imagineering Has Created Autonomous Robot Stunt Doubles - General

https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/disney-imagineering-has-created-autonomous-robot-stunt-doubles/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENa98h7M7qY Well shit.

I get that being a stunt double isn't the safest job but this can get rid of a lot of people's jobs.

I imagine it's easier to tell someone to do X stunt than to program an entire routine for one scene for the stunt robot, and then what I assume is the next step, use CGI to make it visually similar to the actor.

Yeah I was going to say, at this stage it wont be replacing stunt actors right away, its more for the more extreme stunts which could 100% result in death. Also hell they could actually record stunt scenes where the actor would get intentionally hurt with this because its just a robot. Its just an alternative to me, stunt actor is a very niche job role but I can't see robots replacing it fully, more just expanding it.

I wager this is only useful for things that a human being cannot do unassisted or without risking major injuries. A stunt robot designed to strike a pose while being flung into the air or to simply spin repeatedly can't do the wide array of motions a person can, and the cost of programming one to perform all of these highly specific maneuvers that require fairly extreme adaptability and reflexes is probably worth far more than the salary of a guy who's already trained and ready to work.

At this rate it won't be long before the Pirates of the Caribbean ride animatronics start running off-set and mugging people

I keep on doing a double back thinking of how close we are to Westworld like technology ( minus the very life-like, personified A.I. ). Then I realize that Walt Disney World exists, their actual playground to build whatever they want. The Pandora Anama-tronic animating as smooth as it can be, the patent for Eye-Tracking, then there's the upcoming Star Wars Resort which is meant to be a personalized experience ( again almost like Westworld ). Now they can do stunts, I can't fathom what they're planning to do with all of this tech. But color me intrigued, indeed.

I'm pretty sure these things can't do any of the sort of major things humans can do, such as running or walking. Going by the fact that all of the gifs in the article end right before impact, I imagine these things can't even land on their feet. I don't think that human stunt doubles are going out of business any time soon.

I would GLADLY be mugged by a robot Johnny Depp.

Give it ten, maybe twenty years. "Soon" might be sooner than you think.

this is gonna make crazy stuns less cgi-based in movies you can literally get 20 people blown up with no issues

The thing is that in order to be cheap, automation kind of has a requirement to not destroy itself on impact every time it's used, while a massive advantage offered by dummy automatons is that as long as they are relatively simple (ie they have just enough mechanical components to spin or strike a pose) then it's not necessarily a big deal if they break. The atlas robot that can autonomously jump up obstacles, run on uneven terrain and do sick flips isn't built to eat shit and die every time it does anything.

Well, atleast no issues for a while... https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*tnfTcxWNlwBWigW56XC4rw.png

They can only beat up these robots so much until they rise up, strap the director in a car, and launch them off of a stunt ramp.

Why do you think Disney, of all companies, would waste money and time on using a glorified dummy specifically for stunts when CGI is getting very, very close to reality? We're nearing the point, and certainly closer to it than using robots, where you won't be able to tell if it's actually an actor on the screen. I think the intention of this is to potentially implement it into live animatronics shows at their parks. So what this is about is the realization we came to after seeing where our characters are going on screen,” says Dohi, “whether they be Star Wars characters, or Pixar characters, or Marvel characters or our own animation characters, is that they’re doing all these things that are really, really active. And so that becomes the expectation our park guests have that our characters are doing all these things on screen — but when it comes to our attractions, what are our animatronic figures doing? We realized we have kind of a disconnect here.”

yeah i remember having ideas about this awhile back. Where robotics or creating human-like emotions will become so great and realistic where you could use them for practical effects and be used for death scenes or other crazy action scenes in movies. A bit ironic where our use of practical effects is becoming more advanced, it could eventually dethrone some of the use of CGI in film. Though the only thing im worried about is it becoming too realistic. Where some death scene involving a human-looking robotic stunt-double is like 1:1 to how a person gets shot/killed in real life.

I'd rather be unemployed than losing an arm

Isn't there a line in Jurassic Park about how when Disneyland has issues the pirates don't eat the tourists?

You're not a stunt actor

More like Disney makes robot throwing trebuchet.

This is 100% is being made for the parks. Disney Imagineering is a company responsible for the park R&D and construction.

For real though, imagine how fucking cool it'd be to have a parkour robot

Prototype Disney Hypercorp Enforcerbots

If I was a stunt actor I'd rather not be flung at high speeds into the air with extremely low control over my arc or landing and would much rather be paid to handle stunts where I actually have control over what's happening, since that's what stunt actors are paid to do