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Robotic Olaf Appears at NVIDIA AI Conference Ahead of Disneyland Paris Debut

Joshua
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Robotic Olaf Appears at NVIDIA AI Conference Ahead of Disneyland Paris Debut

A self-walking Olaf made an appearance on stage at NVIDIA’s GTC AI conference. He joined Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, for his GTC Keynote presentation.

The robotic Olaf, who debuts on March 29 at World of Frozen in Disney Adventure World, is a crowning achievement for Walt Disney Imagineering. In a new interview, Kyle Laughlin, SVP of WDI Research & Development and Technology & Engineering, explained that one of the biggest challenges was preparing Olaf for his first guest-facing role:

“He is such a unique character — he is made of snow, moves in non-physical ways, and he has snowball feet.”

Those snowball feet will debut in the Celebration in Arendelle show, which takes place on a boat in the middle of Adventure World’s lagoon. Without a typical stage, Imagineers had to teach Olaf how to balance on an unstable surface. “Through deep reinforcement learning, in just a matter of hours, he earned his sea legs,” Laughlin said.

Kamino gave Olaf his balance. Developed by Disney Research, the GPU-accelerated physics “solver” can run thousands of robotic simulations at once, allowing engineers to quickly teach characters how to move in a variety of environments.

“The speed at which we’re able to create new characters – and get them in front of our guests – is unprecedented,” Laughlin said. If that’s the case, Olaf could be the first of many self-walking, free-roaming characters headed to Disney parks and cruise ships. At least, we hope.

Dirk Libbey met Olaf before the robot went out on stage.

If you want a deeper look at how Olaf came to life, this episode of We Call It Imagineering is well worth your next 30 minutes.

Read more: Olaf Draws! Coming to Magic of Disney Animation Experience at Hollywood Studios