Disney’s R&D labs recently revealed that they have built a life-size Groot animatronic that freely walks around. The robot is code-named Project Kiwi and is quite impressive.
Matthew Panzarino from TechCrunch recently got the low-down on this impressive animatronic and mentions that “The gait is smooth, the arms swing in a lifelike manner and the feet plant realistically. The body sways exactly as you’d expect it. There’s no other way to say it, it’s ambling.”
Will we ever see Groot in the parks? Probably not. A lot of stuff that WDI creates never sees the light of day. Panzarino mentions that “I wouldn’t expect to see this in the wild soon, there is still a lot of work to be done on the way that Kiwi works and interacts with people and WDI does not have immediate plans to put it in the parks.”
The animatronic features a 45-minute battery life and built-in speakers for interactions with nearby humans. Which, in Groot’s case, wouldn’t be a whole lot of dialogue.
The video above also gives us a glimpse of another familiar mystery project that once flew over Magic Kingdom to celebrate the grand opening of New Fantasyland. The dragon (seen above) was only seen once by the public back in 2012.
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Clint Gamache is the owner of ThrillGeek. He started ThrillGeek to share his love of theme/amusement parks and pop culture with the world. You can find him at Halloween Horror Nights. Also, be sure to follow him on Twitter @iamcg83