US EditionDisney and Nvidia Combine on Robotics and AI to Bring Olaf Droid to Life
The Olaf robot uses Nvidia GPUs and reinforcement learning to mimic screen-accurate motion and will perform live on a moving boat at Disneyland Paris starting March 29.
- At NVIDIA GTC 2026, Disney presented a lifelike Olaf robot that debuted last week in Los Angeles and will appear in World of Frozen at Disneyland Paris on March 29, powered by Nvidia chips and the Newton Physics Engine.
- Reinforcement learning allowed Disney to train Olaf's movement, building on techniques applied to BDX droids, Gorin said.
- The 35-inch, 33-pound Olaf robot includes onboard Nvidia chips and is teleoperated via a Steam Deck, with Disney training 100,000 virtual Olafs in two days using an Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU.
- At Disneyland Paris Olaf will perform on a boat in the lagoon during World of Frozen, and will later appear at Hong Kong Disneyland shortly after, though Disney warns guests won't get extensive one-on-one time.
- Executives say reinforcement learning positions Disney to build interactive lands faster, and Disney contributed Newton Physics Engine and Kamino as open-source tools with Nvidia, Google DeepMind, and the Linux Foundation.
21 Articles
21 Articles
Good morning! Disney character Olaf takes the stage with Jensen Huang, Joel Hellermark plans a move to the US, and X AI will be rebuilt from the ground up.
We Met Frozen's Olaf at Walt Disney Imagineering and Caught a Glimpse of the Future of Immersive Entertainment at Disney Parks
Disney invited us to its Imagineering offices to meet the incredibly impressive next-generation robotic figure of Olaf that will soon be walking, talking, and interacting with guests at World of Frozen in Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland, and it truly felt as if we were getting a glimpse of the future of immersive entertainment at Disney Parks.First revealed last year alongside a new episode of We Call It Imagineering, Olaf just made an…
I met Olaf — the Frozen robot who might be the future of Disney Parks
Olaf, a Disney Imagineering robot that will greet guests at Disney parks. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge You know Olaf. Before KPop Demon Hunters, before the Wicked movies, it was Disney's Frozen that blasted show tunes like "Let It Go" and "Into the Unknown" into our lives. My little girls loved belting those tunes. So when I met Olaf, the Disney Imagineering robot, I kept thinking: I can't wait for my kids to meet him too. It's a weird…
'Four months' worth of work' — Disney Imagineering built a walking Olaf robot and imagines 'an entire world populated with characters you know and love'
TechRadar spoke with Kyle Laughlin, SVP of R&D, Technology and Engineering at Walt Disney Imagineering, about how Disney built a walking Olaf robot in just four months — and why it could lead to parks filled with roaming characters.
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