Disney to Create Walking Animatronic Dinosaur

nakhla writes "I came across this article discussing Disney's plans to create an animatronic dinosaur that can roam free through it's Disney's California Adventure park. Disney's Imagineering unit has been working on the technology for several years now. While short on technical details, the article does mention that it will be able to interact with guests in numerous ways. Hopefully it won't go berzerk like the animatronic characters in that old Simpsons episode!" No, hopefully it will go berzerk!

Interactive ?

[Gyan]

"This will be the first test of untethered Audio-Animatronics and the next phase in Imagineering's quest to increase interaction with visitors."

Will it eat pesky visitors ?

Popcorn hands?

[phorm]

So in other words... you should probably wash the butter and salt residue off your fingers before putting your hands near its face.
If my rats (deemed some of the smarter rodents) can't figure out the difference between a food-coated finger and actual food... I'm not about to trust some disney AI!

Re:Disney is the best

[HBPiper]

Sorry about the appearance of whining. Actually it is mildly jealous admiration of my wife's favorite tourist destination. Disney's fastidious attention to detail is something you must experience first hand. But once you have, very few non-Disney destinations measure up.

And trying to figure out the science behind some of the stuff they do is very entertaining as well.

Not a biped

[Charles Dodgeson]

Tyrannosaurus, of course - is there any other kind?

I don't think that even Disney could pull off a biped. Mabye the could have a T. rex use its tail, but my bet is a protoceratops. They look enough like a triceretops to be familiar, but don't have all those horns to get in the way of customer interaction.

But they might surprise us with a less familiar animal. A Maiasaurus would be so cuddly as to destroy the effect of having a dinosaur in the first place, but there are pleny of cool looking obscure things that they could use.