robotics and AI

Disney Research has developed a reinforcement learning-based pipeline that relies on simulation to combine and balance the vision of an animator with robust robotic motions. For the animator, the pipeline essentially takes care of implementing the constraints of the physical world, letting the animator develop highly expressive motions while relying on the system to make those motions real—or get as close as is physically possible for the robot. Disney’s pipeline can train a robot on a new behavior on a single PC, running what amounts to years of training in just a few hours. According to Bächer, this has reduced the time that it takes for Disney to develop a new robotic character from years to just months.