Disneyland enjoys robotic revolution
Any discussion of entertainment robots has to include Disney. They have been doing entertainment robots as long as anyone and they do them quite well. With dancing bears and singing pirates Disney's imagineers have created thousands of robots. The robot shown in the picture is used since August, 2003. It is a robot dinosaur named Lucky. He walks on his two back legs and pulls a very large cart of "silk flowers". Really the cart is full of batteries. Even Disney has not figured-out the battery issue that plagues mobile robots. This was the only way they could get enough battery life for the robot to spend a meaningful amount of time wandering the amusement part.
In recent years, Disneyland Park has also improved on their robot team by importing one of the world’s most advanced humanoid robots – ASIMO, produced by Honda. Comparing to the old dinosaur robot, ASIMO is much more intelligent as it can perform tasks including walking forward and backward, climbing and descending a flight of stairs and taking direction from a person.
This is the robot designed for homes usage in future. It has two arms and two hands, which makes tasks such as reaching for and grasping objects, switching lights on and off, or opening and closing doors much easier compare to previous versions. And it has improved on the battery problem as power supply can last longer. We can expect widely application of similar robots in Disneyland while robots will be designed in those popular figures and identities.
referrence:
http://www.learnaboutrobots.com/entertainment.htm
by Yang Kai, U036508R
