[HN Gopher] Disney packed big emotion into a little robot
___________________________________________________________________
Disney packed big emotion into a little robot
Author : rbanffy
Score : 242 points
Date : 2023-10-09 07:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Mark my words, Behavior Authoring will be the Prompt Engineering
| of the future with no looking back
|
| Robotic platforms are a few iterations away from it at most
| Etheryte wrote:
| I'm not sure I see what you mean with that? Prompt engineering
| used to be crucial for getting good results, however with each
| successive iteration it has become less and less relevant.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I 'm not sure I see what you mean with that?_
|
| Prompt engineering is an extremely simple form of behavior
| authoring. I'm curious about how you arrived at the
| conclusion that newer models make prompts and prompting
| strategies less relevant.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior_authoring
| Etheryte wrote:
| An example of what I mean with prompt engineering becoming
| less relevant as models get better is quoted at [0]:
|
| > Researchers from Microsoft tested GPT-4 on medical
| problems and found "that GPT-4, without any specialized
| prompt crafting, exceeds the passing score on USMLE by over
| 20 points and outperforms earlier general-purpose models
| (GPT-3.5) as well as models specifically fine-tuned on
| medical knowledge (Med-PaLM, a prompt-tuned version of
| Flan-PaLM 540B).
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-4#Medical_applications
| rob74 wrote:
| If you ignore the head part, it looks very much like one of these
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_(Star_Wars)#All_Terrain...
| soupfordummies wrote:
| Or this one! https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/BD_unit
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| This was my immediate thought, and this is probably what they
| were going for.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Yeah, I think when they do star wars shows/movies they seem
| to prefer practical droids and aliens when they can do them
| convincingly. They did do a BD in the past in Mando, but I
| think it was CG. Maybe they are working towards a practical
| BD for a future series.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| I used to work at Disney Research. This is a great example of the
| kinds of problems that get explored there. The constraints are
| totally different than the normal consumer-focused engineering
| you find elsewhere, because the creative conceits are
| simultaneously a challenge and a get-out-of-jail-free card.
|
| The impossible parts of problems could be solved by visual
| sleight of hand or some artistic trick, leaving you open to
| explore and solve some really interesting application specific
| problems with technology. The much, much harder part is making
| any of this research work robust and compelling enough to
| actually show in the parks.
| tomcam wrote:
| Why did you leave?
| sproketboy wrote:
| [dead]
| dylan604 wrote:
| With some of the nicknames for one of their buildings in
| Burbank, I could definitely think of some possible reasons.
| Hopefully, the reasons for the GP are different than my
| ideas, and they are much less depressing.
| mkl wrote:
| Well, don't leave us hanging. What are the nicknames? A few
| internet searches didn't seem to pull up anything.
| alana314 wrote:
| Many were forced to move to florida, though Disney is
| backtracking on that now
| knicholes wrote:
| You don't happen to know how someone could get access to some
| amazing research, do you? They released Autoconnect, and it
| blew my mind. I needed it just yesterday, but I couldn't find
| it. https://la.disneyresearch.com/publication/autoconnect/
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| > the kinds of problems that get explored
|
| The uncanny valley problem?
|
| This intrigues me even more.
| dwighttk wrote:
| No qualia no emotion
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Is that to say there is only the display of emotion?
|
| I am curious if the two robot monkeys forget all about the
| history of the ladder.
|
| Will the future not-robot monkeys discover the truth?
|
| I am always amazed that I am not upset at the computer but at
| my failure to operate it in a way to get the desired outcome.
| The ability to generate emotion exists within the imageo and
| not the observed or learned.
| mbakke wrote:
| > The ability to generate emotion exists within the imageo
| and not the observed
|
| I was thinking the _exact_ same thing while pondering the
| parents assertion.
|
| Qualia is just the notion of _being something_. The classic
| example is a bat: what is the qualitative experience of being
| nearly blind, but having wings and a highly accurate
| echolocation system?
|
| Plants too have qualia. What is it _like_ to be a tree. To
| feel the nurture of the sun, the change in seasons, and to
| heal a broken branch.
|
| The qualia of a stone is less exciting, but we can still
| imagine being a dense pack of minerals. Perhaps rolling down
| a mountain and losing some weight. Suddenly finding ourselves
| on the ocean floor, drifting aimlessly, while providing cover
| and nutrition to all sorts of life. After staying stationary
| for thousands of years.
|
| That rock has _seen things_ , man!
|
| Down at the atom level things get more excited. What is the
| qualitative experience of interacting with other atoms? Or a
| photon? Of being _entangled_? State transitions?
|
| Anyway. It's clear to me that this robot absolutely has
| qualia. I can imagine what it's like to be be a circuit
| board, with an operating system, a bunch of sensors, a neural
| processing engine, and a hard shell. How it _feels_.
|
| It makes me appreciate being human more. But also evokes
| empathy for that adorable lump of silicon, metals, and
| plastics. Don't let the GP comment bring you down, little
| one. You are perfect just as you are.
| hammock wrote:
| Perhaps qualia is an abstractive interpretation of the internal
| state that generates emotional expression
| ilaksh wrote:
| They are not claiming that it experiences emotion. The point is
| that it's movements are very emotive.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Prove it doesn't have qualia
| kbelder wrote:
| Qualia is the safety hatch some philosophers use to escape
| from losing arguments.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It has been proven that some truths can not be proven, so
| it's not that interesting of a requirement.
| mbowcut2 wrote:
| Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck.
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| But is actually a Disney animatronic name Daffy
| nerdjon wrote:
| Disney Imagineering (is it still called that?) always seemed
| fascinating when you looked at it as part of a company like
| Disney. Like it doesn't really make sense to exist within Disney
| if you think about it too hard but it also is critical to what
| makes Disney... Disney.
|
| I am always fascinated ever time they release a research video (I
| remember the one talking about snow simulation for Frozen).
|
| It seems like it could be a fascinating place to work and (from
| the outside) seems unique given their priorities. It isn't to
| release a consumer product, a new b2b project, its to support
| some other narrative purpose.
|
| I do find it fairly fascinating that at one point in the video I
| was watching it and figured it had to be CGI. I wonder if that is
| just still not used to this on a regular basis.
|
| Side Note: This robot is CUTE and I want one.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > Like it doesn't really make sense to exist within Disney if
| you think about it too hard but it also is critical to what
| makes Disney... Disney.
|
| Disney himself was a huge fan of technology and both him and
| the CEOs after him recognized that there's a part of the
| industry they're in (entertainment) that requires secrecy;
| literal "magic" is mostly "things you can do that other people
| don't know how to do." So they keep that research in-house
| because they want first-mover advantage on illusions, effects,
| and experiences that nobody else can do.
|
| That's the best way to conceptualize Imagineering: it's a magic
| factory. In that sense, absolutely essential core-business-
| model stuff for the park-and-show entertainment sector of the
| company.
|
| (Some of the more recent CEOs didn't grasp this aspect and
| actually _did_ outsource some of the work done in the past
| half-decade. I 'm going to be real interested to see what the
| park scene looks like in the Orlando area in the next decade or
| so as the technologies third-party vendors developed on
| Disney's behalf diffuse directly into Disney's competition).
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Looks like it's based on the BD-1 droid from the jedi fallen
| order franchise: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/BD-1
|
| He is, in fact, adorable.
| nerdjon wrote:
| hah right? It's not even subtle with how similar it can be.
| It just needs to be able to jump on my shoulder in a few
| generations.
|
| Like ok I get it, Disney isn't going to paint up a prototype
| or reveal too much of their plans with something like this
| likely in the works years in advance.
|
| This wouldn't be the first time they showed a prototype that
| was rather clearly for a specific purpose (like the spider
| man flying robot)
|
| But uh... that is 100% Star Wars.
| slimginz wrote:
| If you watch the video linked in the article he even beeps
| like BD-1! I love it!
| distortedsignal wrote:
| Thank you for remembering BD-1. It was frustrating to not be
| able to remember that droid's designation.
| throwaway9274 wrote:
| The focus on robotics research starts to make more sense when
| you dig into the financials.
|
| Disney's FY2022 operating income was $12.7B. $7.9B (!) of that
| comes from theme parks. That's 65%.
|
| Everything else Disney does (Pixar movies, Disney movies, Star
| Wars movies, television, streaming, touring musicals,
| merchandise, partnerships, IP licensing) is the remaining 45%.
|
| Robotics is essential to the parks.
| detourdog wrote:
| On the other hand Walt Disney was a creative maniac with a
| large fortune and desire to invent theme parks. Imagineering is
| the one valve in the heart of Disney.
| [deleted]
| nerdjon wrote:
| I agree 100%, based on the desire for theme parks it fits.
|
| But from the outside looking in what is "Disney". I would
| wager that for the vast majority of people Disney is Mickey
| Mouse, Frozen, Lion King, etc. basically media. Obviously I
| would say that people would also say the parks. But I doubt
| the word "Tech" is anywhere in the vast majority of people's
| opinion on what Disney is.
|
| It is wild to think that behind what is a media company, is
| an organization with strong engineering talent. I mean it
| seems like that the robot engineering specifically rivals
| most of what else is out there.
|
| That isn't saying there are not more advanced robotics,
| Boston Dynamics projects are a big example.
|
| But there is also something to be said that this is probably
| going to be in a park in just a few years, if not sooner. It
| isn't going to sit in research stage forever.
|
| But it is a really weird timeline that Disney is associated
| with advanced robotics and other crazy things that Disney
| Imagineering does.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Disney corp. and their brilliant animators and technicians
| invented various parts of animated films during an intense
| period of RnD, both technical and creative. This culminated
| in Snow White which was the first animated feature film
| (afaik) and it was a huge hit.
|
| Hollywood was the Silicon Valley of the 20s and 30s. They
| were using and inventing cutting edge tech!
| slowhadoken wrote:
| [flagged]
| nerdjon wrote:
| I should have ignored this comment but I just can't.
|
| Disney has been political for a very very long time. I would
| even say "Woke" since that seems to be the term that you want
| to use so much.
|
| I would like to point out the lyrics for Pocohuants "Colors of
| the Wind".
|
| "You think the only people who are people
|
| Are the people who look and think like you".
|
| This came out in 1995. If that movie came out today people like
| you would be ALL over it calling it Woke.
|
| This doesn't mean that Disney hasn't had its share of problems
| when it comes to representation and similar issues. Like Mickey
| donning blackface in an old cartoon (Is that the "Wholesome"
| content you want Disney to be making again?).
|
| But creating media is inherently political in some form.
| Otherwise you are not saying anything of value and what you're
| making probably shouldn't exist. (There are some nuance to this
| but let's keep this simple). You are generally trying to say or
| express _something_ and that can be political in its purist
| form (may not political in how it 's viewed today but still
| political).
|
| As far as Disney going away from "identity politics". Well that
| isn't happening. Not only are they still fighting the "Don't
| Say Gay" bill but they are holding official pride nights at
| their parks now.
|
| We have seen an increase in representation in Disney media and
| gotten a lot of praise for doing that. It has been slower than
| many of us would like, but it's still progress.
|
| The world isn't about to start going backwards and Disney is
| just following that most people don't give a shit anymore.
|
| For the record I am saying all of this as a gay man with
| multiple Disney tattoos, including a pride one I very proudly
| wear on my arm that is always visible.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Disney, the company, goes where the money goes. I mean, yes,
| there are human beings with beliefs in charge also, but the
| company has a _very_ sensitive nose for where the wind is
| blowing in terms of American politics. Misreading those winds
| leaves money on the table.
|
| Disney World Gay Days were an organized event dating back to
| the '90s, where people would show up on a specific day and
| wear red to indicate they were there for a specific reason.
| This was, broadly, supported by the staff (no surprise that
| there is a massive overlap between a theater-heavy ecosystem
| and LGBTQ+ tolerance and inclusion) and never formally
| endorsed by the company.
|
| ... but the company _did_ start selling red-based rainbow-
| patterned official merchandise for certain months of the
| year. Plausible deniability, but people have money and the
| company would prefer they spend it.
|
| If anything, the Disney we see in this decade of the 2000s is
| a Disney that is responding to what it perceives Americans
| are willing to support, spend money on, and consume. People
| blame Disney for "being woke," but Disney's Disney; it's
| always been Disney. Disney looks at American culture,
| catalyzes it, makes it feel fun, exciting, and engaging, and
| feeds it back to the public. Disney's telling the stories its
| audience wants to hear.
|
| ... and _that_ is what scares the hell out of the DeSantises
| of the country and those who support them.
|
| (Sidebar: if you happen to know staff who have worked at the
| parks and are willing to talk to you off-the-record, the
| stories are _hilarious_ about guest behavior. Gay Days guests
| were basically never a problem. Church youth groups, on the
| other hand? Cast has to poke their noses into every nook and
| cranny of the parks to make sure they aren 't sneaking off to
| make out and... let's say "violating decency policy").
|
| (Sidebar 2: I tend to be a cynic and my writing tends to end
| up with a cynical tone. but I want to turn the elephant
| around here and highlight something: "Disney responds to what
| Americans are willing to support" means that they're doing
| what they do now because people like you didn't shut up when
| told, didn't sit down, didn't go away, didn't become
| invisible. There are megacorporations who haven't been able
| to make the Mouse hear them. The people who stubbornly
| refused to go away for so many _decades_ that the company
| started selling red shirts and rainbow mouse ears did
| something to be proud of.)
| nerdjon wrote:
| So just a couple things, I wasn't referring to Disney World
| Gay Days but "Disneyland Pride at Night" which was an
| official event that was held this year.
|
| I was at the event and it had the feeling of it being
| organized as a big "F U" to DeSantis. (and btw it was a
| fantastic event).
|
| They also have pride elements around both parks (including
| a friend of mine was there just a month or so ago and they
| still had some pride things up. Downtown Disney at
| Disneyland has (or had) a giant pride mickey reef.
|
| Disney now is past plausible deniability on this.
|
| I do think that Disney did push the envelope a bit. I mean
| it was back in 2014 that they had a Disney Chanel show had
| a lesbian couple with kids on Good Luck Charlie.
|
| But you are right that the reality is what Disney is doing
| (and most companies) is following what is socially
| acceptable. That is good business. Maybe they will push a
| bit, especially with Hollywood tending to lean more
| socially liberal so they are generally a few steps head of
| the rest of the country.
|
| Edit: The Floral Reef I am referring too: https://i.insider
| .com/6492105565b9ce0018a43b68?width=1000&fo...
| Philpax wrote:
| Hear, hear.
| aintgonnatakeit wrote:
| Perhaps you meant to say that you're happy they're moving back
| toward broadly appealing topics instead of those resembling a
| rather small part of the population.
| yayitswei wrote:
| Much cuter than the military parkour robot we saw the other day.
| Both impressive though!
| seeknotfind wrote:
| Definitely reminds me of Wall.e
| grecy wrote:
| Which I believe took cues from Johnny 5
| mysterydip wrote:
| Sounds like turtles all the way down
| cptnapalm wrote:
| It's pretty much BD-1 from Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Looks that way, but maybe he needs some ozempic, looks like
| he put on a freshman five ;)
| divbzero wrote:
| I assume (hope?) this is one of the cases where an advanced robot
| is being designed without military use in mind.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Have some coworkers that used to work for Disney. I hear most
| left since the California to Florida transition. It's a shame
| because the problems sound so interesting but I also hear the pay
| is very mediocre.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| There was no florida to california transition. That got axed by
| the drama surrounding the florida governor and disney pulled
| out:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/18/disney-scraps-lake-nona-
| flor....
| syntaxing wrote:
| It never came into fruition suddenly but I believe it was
| always the planned agenda prior. Which makes sense to change
| your job if you expect that it wouldn't be in the area you
| want to live in the long run.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Great now whatever is copyright eligible in there is lost to
| progress.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Disney had an animatronic Lincoln that blew everybody away at the
| '64 Worlds Fair
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moments_with_Mr._Lincoln
|
| (Oddly, Phillip K. Dick's _We can build you_ featuring a Lincoln
| simulacrum was written in 1962, a few year before Disney 's
| Lincoln)
|
| The emotional impact of that Lincoln was carried by the voice
| actor
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dano
|
| working under Disney's direction. As others have pointed out this
| is an example of where a system like this can be carried by
| getting a few things really right and faking the other ones well
| enough.
|
| Disney
| ska wrote:
| > (Oddly, ...
|
| Why would that be odd? It's very common for speculative fiction
| to have a version of something before it is realized in the
| "real world".
| scroot wrote:
| For whatever reason, it bugs me that this robot doesn't have a
| name (or at least the name isn't mentioned in the article)
| eatonphil wrote:
| > As far as this robot goes, the character doesn't have an
| official name, and Disney isn't ready to comment on where we
| might see it. But based on how it looks and sounds, we have
| some guesses.
|
| Yup
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Looks like it's a slightly overweight BD-1 from the jedi fallen
| order games. Awesome.
| WesSouza wrote:
| Remember Vector from Anki, which had some former Pixar animators
| working on it.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| What is the total addressable market for a Disney/Star Wars
| branded e-pet droid? Seeing the kids pull a robot with this much
| 'personality' on a leash made it seem like an obvious use case.
| The robot wouldn't have to be that cheap to be less expensive
| than buying and caring for a dog. It has to be as adorable as
| this robot though.
| suyash wrote:
| nice, now any pointers on how someone can make something similar
| in a smaller form factor?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Hardware is more or less half a robot dog, but the cuteness is
| in the software. Closest open source cute animatronics I've
| seen is Stack-chan based on M5Stack/ESP32, but it's still far
| off from Disney cute.
|
| 1: https://github.com/meganetaaan/stack-chan
| all2 wrote:
| I'd be very tempted to try and run a gear train and cable
| system so that the majority of the weight was near center of
| mass. If you're going small enough, there are servos that pull
| a few oz and could easily manipulate fishing line in tubes.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Fit enough hardware to run a language model into one of these and
| Disney's got a trillion dollar market here.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Basically an "Ashley Too"
|
| Whether a toy market is a trillion dollars is questionable.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Oh, not even. You off-board that hardware into a nearby
| cluster. No reason the brain has to be in the chassis when
| radio is so high-bandwidth.
|
| ... a Disney of the past would build four of these and just
| have them wander around EPCOT's Future World, just to set the
| tone. This Disney will probably purpose them for their Star
| Wars experiences. Still great to see.
| mbowcut2 wrote:
| This is the move right here. And it doesn't have to be a GPT-4
| I-know-absolutely-everything model. I think they could train a
| <1B param model that is capable of being cute and interactive.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I dunno.
|
| Dialogue is the area where the interactivity of video games
| falls down completely. I mean, dialogue in a video game can
| be just as good as the dialogue in a movie but it has to be
| "on rails" because of the lack of linguistic competence of
| today's computers.
|
| Even with a much better system it has to be "on rails" in
| that a video game character will get in trouble if you get it
| to enough an extended conversation which can be somewhat
| answered by "people have various ways to set boundaries" and
| that that of course can be part of the characterization.
|
| Y'all are probably sick of me talking about how Tamamo-no-mae
| in the game Fate/Extella is the pinnacle of characterization
| in modern games, but being based on a legendary character who
| is able to charm people by talking intelligently about any
| subject who is connected to a photonic crystal computer that
| has recorded all the Earth's history and having the
| relationship she does with the protagonist any answer she has
| to why she doesn't realize her promise would be terribly
| disappointing.
| bpicolo wrote:
| They could also just call out to web services with cellular
| internet.
| ghayes wrote:
| The RTT would need to be very low. It's hard to have a
| conversation with 2-3 second pauses.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The long poll in GPT isn't network; it's compute.
| Unfortunately, the tech probably isn't there yet for this
| use case.
| patapong wrote:
| I am not sure about that! It seems like small models are
| emerging that are a bit more specific but can be very
| small, and thus have much lower latency. For example:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.07759
| aiunboxed wrote:
| Agree, that is all kids would need.
| [deleted]
| mc32 wrote:
| We could have a Johnny Five! That would be super cool.
| ragebol wrote:
| Or an AT-ST to do home patrol. Beware of squirrels with logs
| and rope though.
| etrvic wrote:
| I think i know what my next side project is.
| tortoise_in wrote:
| Feels like Wall-E is coming to life
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-10-10 23:00 UTC)