Disney’s Imagineers have moved way past slightly terrifying animatronic presidents of the United States and even the awe-inspiring wonders of Toy Story Land. Now they’ve created a real-life, autonomous robot stunt double.
While it sounds like a plot line from a reboot of The Rocketeer, as TechCrunch reports, this is very real and with real-world applications that could mean fewer injuries for brave stunt actors who risk their lives for action sequences in summer blockbusters.
To make its animatronic Disney characters even more eerily lifelike, Disney’s Imagineering R&D department launched a new division of the company called Stuntronics with the hopes of building a stuntbot that could act like a superhero. And boy did they deliver: The humanoid robot can swing from a rope, strike cool poses, fix its trajectory while flying through the air, and land in a designated spot every single time. It also has onboard accelerometer and gyroscope arrays with laser range finding—and it’s definitely coming to life and taking over the world.
Until then: cool.
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