We had a really lucky opportunity to visit Pixar earlier this week and RoboBrrd came along too! RoboBrrd is quite the robot character as we have all seen, so this was quite special for it. RoboBrrd always chirps late at night how it will one day become an animatronic movie super star! (whatever that means)
Our tour was from @drwave, who I met on Twitter from WWDC’11! EMSL also came along, and it turns out that they also knew him from before. Thanks for the tour drwave! 
Pixar is a pretty cool place, at the front there is a huge scale version of the Luxo Jr. lamp and its ball! Check it out!
The inside is super spacious. They probably could fit a spaceship in the atrium area!
Here is RoboBrrd on top of Mike. This would make a great caption contest pic 
ROBOBRRD COMES IN PEACE.
This is a very cute picture of Wall-E. Also got a little insight into Wall-E’s arms! For instance, have you noticed how expressive they allow Wall-E to be? It can push them back to look more powerful, but also bring them closer in to make it look more vulnerable.
It’s really cool how many awards Pixar has. Their creativity has brought them to such great heights! These next pics are all from EMSL- thanks guys! 
RoboBrrd enjoys trying to communicate with Kevin!
RoboBrrd in an epic staring contest with a bird from For the Birds!
Pixar is a great example of how magical technology combining with art can be. There is tons of computer science that goes on behind the scenes of all the animation, but without the characters and stories it wouldn’t really mean much. It takes them a really long time to render one frame though- about 8 hours.
I wonder how well animatronics could compare in this way. All of the robots would have to be built by hand, but then you can direct them (or they could direct themselves autonomously) and just film the result. You would probably need some computer graphics to enhance explosions and such though. As for faeries now, they aren’t that difficult as you could simply use a UAV.
For large characters this approach might not work well, but for mini swarm characters it would be great. Another cool thing about animatronics would be that the characters would get to roll/walk down the red carpet themselves! With some natural language processing, perhaps they could answer the interview questions as well. Or respond in bleep bloops!
One of the main questions that I’ve had is how to make a squash and stretch robot. For example, Keepon is a squash and stretch robot. These type of robots are always interesting because their degrees of expression are immense. This technique is used often in Pixar films, and it is just fantastic to add more expression to the characters.
Originally I was thinking in terms of using multiple swashplates to get the movement correct. However, it would be a lot better to use a robot that has some sort of volume, like if it is filled with a fluid or something. This answer is a great help! Though in my robots I’ll probably use bean bag beans rather than a liquid, it is a step in the right direction. Really looking forward to trying to make a squwetchy robot!
Thanks @drwave for giving us a tour! You rock! It was fantastic to go to Pixar!
