If you're going to Disneyland in the future, don't be surprised to see a robotic Mickey Mouse greeting you. The giant company has unveiled its plans of placing artificial intelligence of its iconic characters instead of real people.
Disney claimed that this change wouldn't scare away the children as it intends to have the robots interact with people. Jon Snoddy, Disney's senior vice president for research and development, said in a BBC News interview, "Obviously we're not the business of scaring kids! That won't be part of what we deploy. We go and do tests in our parks to gauge the reaction and try and understand what kids find entertaining about these things."
During the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference and Festival, the company showed a footage of a robotic Pascal, the chameleon from "Tangled." The challenge Disney will be facing is to avoid the thought of "uncanny valley," where life-like inanimate objects become too frightening.
Once the AI technology is designed and created, it will be deployed in all parks. However, there has not been any word yet as to when these AI will be developed and arranged on the parks. Snoddy said that Disney would do anything in its power to "hide inner technological workings" so as not to be obvious to visitors or be defaced by other people.
Moreover, Disney foresees to the AI characters to be sold as toys as well on top of exploring these robots for storytelling in the parks. Meanwhile, the company is mulling over its new parks like Star Wars Land and the creation of its robotic life-sized AT-AT Walkers.
Also, people will get to see "Pandora - The World of Avatar" and what Disney promises to be "the most realistic animatronic figures" in theme parks on May 27. Disney hopes to integrate many more state-of-the-art technologies in its parks.
