Which is it?
Today there are many figures in the world that make you wonder if it is an animatronic or a robot. Since the age of automatons (admittedly before the word “animatronic” existed) these mechanical creations were called “robots”. Strange as there were no electronics involved, right? Fast forward to today and there are many cases where you could legitimately ask “is this a robot, animatronic, or some fusion of the two?”
What is a Robot?
Good question! Generally speaking robots have been defined by function, not so much form. By this I mean a robot like a Roomba would be judged by its performance in sensor fusion, but also logic programming in something like C++, and finally action like navigating a maze. Not much consideration at all to the aesthetics. In many cases no human interaction factors were involved in the design.
What is an Animatronic?
It used to be essentially the opposite of the robot definition. For example, Disney’s Lincoln figure was designed for performance. The programming was a recording that did not have sensors related to perception. This ground breaking animatronic looked extremely real at the time. Animatronic figures used to be completely for performance, defined by their form and aesthetics.
Fusion!
Today companies like Engineered Arts, Disney Research, and others have brought both animatronics and robotics together. Now animatronics are robots, and robots are animatronics. These characters not only perform but also have perception of their environment and can make performances autonomously interactive with their audiences. With the fast growing capabilities of A.I. like ChatGPT innovative companies have integrated animatronic robotics that can actually “think” with only small amounts of heuristic coding! Neural nets, trained by LLMs capable of multi-modal inputs, have made all the difference. AMECA is a perfect example. It is not a pre-programmed show. This is real interaction with an animatronic robot! So…what is coming next? Let us know what you think in your comments.
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2024