Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Other

Michael Anthony Hopkins

Kyle Michael Cesare

Jared Edward Bishop

Georg Wiedebach

Stelian Coros

Jeremie A Papon

Moritz Niklaus Bächer

Lars Espen Knoop

Christian Gabriel Schumacher

Jerry W Rees

Kyle Robert Thompson

Scott Christopher Lavalley

Dexter J Dickinson

A robot design and control system including a procedural animation engine and a graphical animation editor that enable animators to author stylized walking gaits achievable by physical robotic characters, including bipedal robots of varying design. The animation engine generates dynamically feasible reference trajectories for omnidirectional walking given a desired walking velocity that may be input from a joystick or an artificial intelligence (AI) planner. This allows a legged robot to walk along an arbitrary path while expressing a custom animation 'style,' e.g., a happy walk, a sneaky walk, or other manner of walking. The stylized walking motion or gait is generalized by the animation engine from a small number of animation samples that are defined at key walking velocities and tracked using a whole-body controller. The set of samples that are used as input to define a walking style is authored by an animator using the animation editor.

Procedural animation engine and editor for sample-based design of stylized walking gaits for bipedal robots

A new controller for use in robots with kinematic loops as well as in most other types of robots (such as those with fully actuated kinematic trees). The controller includes an inverse kinematics (IK) module that implements a versatile IK formulation for retargeting of motions, including expressive motions, onto mechanical systems (i.e., robots with loops and/or without loops). Further, the controller is configured to support the precise control of the position and orientation of end effectors and the center of mass (CoM) (such as of walking robots). The formulation of the algorithms carried out by the IK module safeguards against a disassembly when IK targets are moved outside the workspace of the robot. A regularizer is included in the controller that smoothly circumvents kinematic singularities where velocities go to infinity.

Robot with an inverse kinematics (IK)-based controller for retargeting input motions

A system includes a computing platform having processing hardware, one or more sensor(s), and a memory storing perception software and animation software, as well as an augmented reality (AR) headset including another processing hardware. The computing platform is configured to obtain an environmental data using the sensor(s), determine the location and orientation of the AR headset using the perception software and the environmental data, identify an action for execution by the computing platform, using the animation software and the location and orientation of the AR headset, and transmit performative data corresponding to the identified action to the AR headset. The AR headset is configured to receive, from the computing platform, the performative data, and to render at least one AR effect corresponding to the identified action using the performative data.

Augmented reality enhanced interactive robotic animation

A robot actor, or character mobility hardware platform, adapted to unleash or provide a wide variety of characters in the physical world. The robot actor enables the often screen-constrained characters to become life-like, interactive participants with nearby people in ways not presently achievable. The robot actor is an untethered, free-roaming robot that is has two (or more) legs, is adapted for high dexterity, is controlled and designed to be self-balancing, and, due to this combination of characteristics, the robot can provide characters with an illusion of life and, in many cases, in correct proportion and scale. The hardware and software of the robot actor will become a new generation of animatronic figures by providing a hardware platform capable of continuously evolving to become more capable through advances in controls and artificial intelligence (AI).

Legged high-dexterity self-balancing capable robot actor

Growing community of inventors

Pasadena, CA, United States of America

Michael Anthony Hopkins