Disney Enterprises, Inc.

James R Robertson

Holger Irmler

Philip John Jackson

Asa K Kalama

Raymond J Scanlon

James Alexander Stark

Michael Richard Honeck

Timothy J Eck

Cory J Rouse

Jonathan Michael Becker

Dolce Lin Wang

Christopher Cameron Stuart

Angela Jay

Harold E Charles

A method for facilitating and enhancing computer-based authoring of gesture definitions that are useful in controlling a walk-around character and other systems using gesture controls. The method includes, during performance of a gesture by a performer, collecting sets of raw sensor data each corresponding to differing parameters of the performance of the gesture. The method includes displaying a graphical user interface with a graphical plot of each of the sets of raw sensor data. The method includes receiving user input identifying which of the parameters to include in a gesture definition. The method includes, for the graphical plots associated with the chosen parameters receiving user input defining a starting position, an ending position, a maximum value, and a minimum value. The gesture may involve movement of a performer's arms, legs, hands, head, eyes, and so on in a particular manner.

Control system using aesthetically guided gesture recognition

A musical game system and associated methods configured to allow for unguided, free-form group-based musical expressivity during generation of a collaborative digital music track (or 'song'). The musical game system is designed to provide a hardware and software pipeline that functions to record, quantize, and loop multiple (e.g., 1 to 15 or more) users' inputs (e.g., via a piezoelectric MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) controllers or triggered instruments or other user input devices) in a dynamic playback space. The musical game system further functions to provide volume attenuation and localization of playback to enable participants to express themselves with their user inputs with complete agency while simultaneously adding to an overarching, collaborative musical composition generated using their user inputs and other participants' user inputs. The collaborative musical composition is created by the system so as to maintain coherence and tonality regardless of the user inputs the system receives and processes.

Rhythm-based musical game for generative group composition

A robot that includes two or more skeletal or rigid links interconnected by a joint. The joint is pneumatically actuated and includes a pneumatic joint actuator that allows the robot's skeletal links to be moved in an expressive manner. The pneumatic actuator includes a pair of opposing air bladders encased within a housing or body of the joint. Each air bladder is positioned on an opposite side of an actuating lever arm, which is rigidly attached to one of the skeletal links and is pivotally mounted on the joint body or housing. Movement of the actuating lever arm causes the attached skeletal link to pivot. To obtain this selective movement, one of the two air bladders is filled with a gas, such as air, while the other is left un-inflated or less inflated, and this forces the lever arm and attached skeletal link to pivot about their mounting point.

Pneumatically actuated and safely compliant skeletal joints for robotic characters

This disclosure illustrates systems and methods for generating synchronized audio output signals. The synchronization may be performed based on an audio synchronization message received by an audio synchronization computing platform over a communication network. The audio synchronization computing platform may generate a synchronized audio output signal from an audio signal. The audio synchronization computing platform may provide the synchronized audio output signal to one or more audio playback devices over the same communication network. The communication network may be a single ethernet network.

Systems and methods for networked media synchronization

A control system for interactively operating a show control system (audio plus data) provided in a walk-around character costume. The system includes an interactive controller wearable with the walk-around character costume. The system includes an audio base station and a host controller communicatively linked to the audio base station. The interactive controller and the audio base station communicate via a wireless communications link. The control system includes a speaker controlled by the interactive controller, and the host controller transmits data over the wireless communications link via the audio base station including commands to play an audio file and an animation file, stored in memory accessible by the interactive controller, with the speaker. The control system includes microphones, linked to the interactive controller, capturing sounds near the walk-around character costume, and the interactive controller transmits the captured sounds over the communications link to the host controller via the audio base station.

Full-duplex, wireless control system for interactive costumed characters

Utility sled

Growing community of inventors

Los Angeles, CA, United States of America

James R Robertson