Olaf is more popular than ever. After becoming a fan favorite in the Frozen films and shorts, he is now making even more buzz by walking…and talking… and singing… and doing it all on a boat as it moves around! Walt Disney Imagineering continues to utilize technology to create magical experiences and memories for guests in the Disney parks and ships around the world.
One of the incredible ways that this has been done is with robotics. Whether it is through a stunt robot flying through the air above Avengers Campus at the Disneyland Resort, BDX Droids strolling and scanning their way through Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, or now Olaf appearing at Disneyland Paris’ new World of Frozen, this technology is wowing people and bringing things that previously would only be able to be imagined to life right in front of guets’ eyes!
Olaf will be officially making his public debut regularly at Disney Adventure World’s new World of Frozen. This will come at the end of the month when both Disney Adventure World and World of Frozen debut. This week, Olaf made an appearance not just for invited guests at World of Frozen in France, but he also made the trek to NVIDIA GTC, the biggest AI conference of the year for developers, researchers, and business leaders. There, he debuted on stage with NVDIA CEO Jensen Huang during his keynote speech.
After the keynote, Kyle Laughlin, SVP, Research & Development and Technology & Engineering at Walt Disney Imagineering, shared about the technical advancements Walt Disney Imagineering has accomplished in the last few months.
Now that Olaf is about to make his guest-facing debut at World of Frozen, what obstacles did R&D face in advancing Olaf’s movements and how were they overcome?
We’ve been hard at work to make sure Olaf is ‘show ready.’ He is such a unique character — he is made of snow, moves in non-physical ways, and he has snowball feet. Olaf will be debuting at World of Frozen as part of the daily Celebration in Arendelle show, which takes place on a boat in the lagoon. This meant he had to learn to balance on an unstable surface. Through deep reinforcement learning, in just a matter of hours, he earned his sea legs.
Tell us about the continued work you’re doing with NVIDIA and Google DeepMind, specifically the progress on the Kamino simulator Disney Research developed.
The Kamino simulator is a GPU-accelerated physics solver designed for accurate simulation of complex mechanical systems. Kamino enables large-scale reinforcement learning by running thousands of parallel environments on a single GPU, including inhomogeneous worlds where each environment can contain a structurally different robot. Deep reinforcement learning through simulation allowed Olaf to learn to stand and walk in challenging environments, like on a boat, in a fraction of the time it would take a human child.
Are there plans to use Kamino to develop and train new robotic characters? Are there specific characters you’re excited to explore next?
Kamino is designed for simulating complex mechanical systems that go beyond simple kinematic trees, which are basically maps of connections that inform the ways in which the robots move. If you think about all the tools in our Imagineering toolbox, Kamino is another that will help us solve real world problems and physical challenges. The speed at which we’re able to create new characters — and get them in front of our guests — is unprecedented. We are working to bring more emotive, expressive, and surprising characters to guests at our parks and ships around the world.
With the possibility of more characters coming in the future thanks to this technological magic, the question then becomes, who’s next? What characters would you like to see brought to life next, utilizing this type of technology? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments below!
