00:00Wow! Yes, this is Disney's next-generation audio-animatronic, and we're exclusively showing it to you after I saw it
00:07in person inside Walt Disney Imagineering's R&D Lab.
00:10What you're looking at is a pirate, and in real time it transforms from human skeleton right before your eyes.
00:15And now this pirate, which is powered by Imagineering's next-gen tech, is debuting at Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean,
00:21joining countless audio-animatronics in one of the park's most iconic rides.
00:25At first glance, it almost looks too simple, but it's actually a hybrid system.
00:30The body and core mechanical movements still use classic audio-animatronic technology,
00:35the same kind of engineering that Disney has refined for decades, but the face is something entirely new.
00:40Instead of traditional facial mechanics, it's built on a 3D-printed facial cell with no visible moving parts,
00:45and Expressen is driven by a high-fidelity projection system mapped directly onto its surface.
00:51As you can see, during calibration, a mess of light wraps across the character,
00:54locking every contour into place, turning light into expression.
00:58No cuts, no edits, just projection, rendering, and robotics working seamlessly together.
01:04Imagineering says the goal isn't tech for its own sake.
01:06It's emotion.
01:07It's making you believe the character is real,
01:10and standing there in the lab watching it cycle again and again and again,
01:14we believe it.
01:15For the full scoop on Disney's next-gen animatronic, head to TechRadar.com to read my full feature,
01:19and you can scan this QR code to become a TechRadar insider.
01:23Signing up is free and unlocks exclusive rewards, member perks, and so much more.
01:27Ho, ho, ho!!!
01:31UGHGH!
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