The idea that artificial intelligence will someday be able to understand and even generate narratives has inspired and motivated researchers for years. A question inextricably bound to both lines of research remains unresolved, however: Can AI recognize a good story if it sees one? In the first large-scale attempt to tackle this challenging problem, scientists…

Sit on Disney Research’s Magic Bench and you may have an elephant hand you a glowing orb. Or you might get rained on. Or a tiny donkey might saunter by and kick the bench. It’s a combined augmented and mixed reality experience, but not the type that involves wearing a head-mounted display or using a…

A new type of hydrostatic transmission that combines hydraulic and pneumatic lines can safely and precisely drive robot arms, giving them the delicacy necessary to pick up an egg without breaking it. This transmission has almost no friction or play, offering extreme precision for tasks such as threading a sewing needle. The hybrid transmission makes…

Researchers at Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have developed a system for finding computer bugs in small devices that scavenge their energy from their environment and are subject to intermittent power failures. Whether these devices harvest energy from radio waves, solar energy, heat or even vibration, it’s anticipated that they all will lose…

Even non-professionals may someday be able to create high-quality video panoramas using multiple cameras with the help of an algorithm developed by a team of Disney researchers. Their method smooths out the blurring, ghosting and other distortions that routinely occur when video feeds from unstructured camera arrays are combined to create a single panoramic video.…

Disney Research has demonstrated that battery-free, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be used to cheaply and unobtrusively determine how people use and interact with daily objects, enabling new types of interactive play, smart homes and work environments, and new methods for studying consumer shopping habits. RFID tags are designed to simply report an identifying…

A team from Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon University have devised a 3-D printer that layers together laser-cut sheets of fabric to form soft, squeezable objects such as bunnies, doll clothing and phone cases. These objects can have complex geometries and incorporate circuitry that makes them interactive. “Today’s 3-D printers can easily create custom metal,…

Visitors to interactive virtual worlds want the ability to significantly affect the outcome of a story, but authoring these digital experiences is extremely complex. A new platform developed by Disney Research will help fulfill the medium’s promise by automating some aspects of the authoring process. Disney Research has developed a new design paradigm called interactive…

Techniques now used to reconstruct 3D models based on multiple photos of a building, object or scene can also be leveraged to automatically estimate illumination conditions depicted in a collection of photographs, scientists at Disney Research and Université Laval report. Everyone knows that objects can look markedly different depending on lighting conditions, the physical characteristics…

A new image processing technique developed by Disney Research Zurich could make high dynamic range (HDR) video look better when shown on consumer-quality displays by preserving much of the rich visual detail while eliminating “ghosting” and other unwanted visual artifacts. The combination of HDR acquisition and the new technique enables video effects such as showing…

Sound effects and visual effects have long been standard tools for entertaining audiences, but even as storytellers increasingly turn to haptic feedback to engage the sense of touch in games, theme park rides and movies, they have lacked a common vocabulary to describe or access these “feel effects.” Researchers at Disney Research Pittsburgh are beginning…

The air pressure that makes inflatable parade floats, foil balloons and even inflatable buildings easy to deploy and cost effective can be challenging to designers of those same inflatables due to limitations in today’s fabrication process, but a new interactive computational tool enables even non-experts to create intricate inflatable structures. Developed by a team from…

Perhaps no aspect of 3D printing has captured the popular imagination more than personalized figurines with the facial features of real people. Now, researchers at Disney Research Zurich and the University of Zaragoza have developed a method that can incorporate an individual’s hairstyle as well. The researchers will present their new method at ACM SIGGRAPH…