Disney's Important Research

I don’t know if it comes from my gullible-ness or just that so many people are so good at composing arguments, but it’s hard for me to read an argument without agreeing.  So these books and articles from class are really turning me into a Disney pessimist.  With all of these anti-Disney sentiments we’ve been reading in class, however, I try to counter the arguments with some positive aspects of Disney.  Of course I think about how much joy people get from the Disney films and parks and merchandise.  While reading the Giroux pieces, I was thinking about the intense marketing strategies and figured that Disney must have a fair amount of research under its belt.  

Most obviously, Disney has made major strides in animation, often leading the field.  Since the release of Steamboat Willie in 1928, Disney has been a pioneer. What most don't know is that the early pioneer of many Disney animations was not Walt Disney, but his employee Ub Iwerks. Much later, in 1995, with many innovations in between, Disney-Pixar released the Toy Story, which was the first feature-length, computer-animated movie. Animated films surely would be less enjoyable and aesthetically pleasing without the innovations of Disney. Nowadays, in attempts to improve animation of things like fog, water, and cloth behavior, Disney has improved modeling technologies and created algorithms that could have wider implications than just animation.

Ub Iwerks creating the character Mickey Mouse

Less obviously, Disney has "innovented" a lot of technology. Some of it is useless, but so is a lot of technology. One of these seemingly useless technologies is called Visually Consistent Acoustic Redubbing. This takes a video of mouth movements and generates all possibilities for what the speaker could be saying, making use of the McGurk Effect. This has implications for film and television production, but it also can go beyond that. With these technologies, a computer would be able to analyze what is most likely being said and could translate into other forms of communications, such as written word or sign language. This could enable communication between many more people, which is definitely a positive outcome of Disney technologies.

Press Play to see the McGurk effect

This is how our brain mixes audio and visual to interpret words

Another new technology that Disney was working on this spring could transform parts of society. This technology is called "hybrid hydrostatic transmission and human-safe haptic telepresence robot." After skimming the research paper put out about this technology, I can't say I understand almost any of how it works. The important thing to know about this robot is that it can move incredibly human-like with fluid motions. It is controlled remotely by a person who can see through camera "eyes" on the top of the robot. For Disney, this means that the characters around the parks for people to meet can be robots instead. In its current state, this technology can be used for cheaper, more efficient manufacturing, which one human controlling the motion of many robots. Once the robot is autonomous (well, coded by humans) it will eliminate the role of humans in a lot of ways and further human-robot interactions. This scares me a little bit. I find both the ideas of robots maliciously taking over the world and eliminating the need for humans in low-level manufacturing jobs utterly unappealing. That being said, I'm sure this robot innovation could have very important implications with medicine or other important fields.

This is the hybrid hydrostatic transmission and human-safe haptic telepresence robot

Disney research also figured out a way to use one material but create different elasticities. While previously people could achieve this by varying the materials, a team of Disney researchers figured out that this could be achieved by printing areas with varied densities and structures (lattice vs more solid structures). This technology can be applied to create cheaper toys, medical equipment (perhaps prosthetics), etc.

This is a 3D printer.

This shows the difference in lattice structure and density

One final technology of many is a tough technology developed by Disney. It is called "Aireal." Aireal is a 3D-printed technology that shoots out air vortexes that apply a force to the user. These air vortexes can give the user the sensation of touching a real object in thin air. In a CNN article about the technology, Aireal was compared to an Xbox Kinect where the user would actually feel, say, a soccer ball coming at them or the force of a ball hitting a tennis racket that they are pretending to hold. The goal on the part of Disney for this product is to be able to create diverse interactive experiences for the user, which I suppose would be a Disney park guest. Other possible implications could be as an educational tool for sports or just various new experiences. It also could help people who are in a wide range of physical therapy, especially with reaction to stimuli of sorts.

This is Aireal. The circle is moving from the apparatus to the hand and the hand will feel it as a force.

These are just a few examples of the incredible technological advances Disney has had in the last few decades, not even including marketing strategies, audio technologies, understanding of child development, and sports innovations. I like to think that for all the criticism Disney receives, there is an important breakthrough to counteract it. Even if Disney's research often seems selfish, just benefiting the profit of the corporation, there are broad implications for almost every innovation Disney has put out.