Lifelike Animatronic Abraham Lincoln!

Lifelike Anumatronic Abrham Lincoln Hey everybody, it's Norm from Tested. I'm here outside the studio of Garnet Holt Productions. Now, that may not be a name familiar to you but you may have recognized their work specifically their animatronics work which appears in theme parks all over the world including some Disney parks. Now, a couple months ago they released a video of some of their latest animatronics including an incredibly realistic Abraham Lincoln animatronic. So I'm here today to meet with Mr. Garner Holt himself and look at that Abraham Lincoln animatronic to see how it works. I can't wait. Witchcraft is something bad. We can't explain. Magic is something good that we can't figure out how it works. Garner Holt Productions is in the business of making good magic. Garner, thank you so much for having me here. This is incredible. This is Abraham Lincoln. It is the one only. So this is, it sounds like, one of your latest animatronics. How long have you guys been making animatronics? Well thank you, we're glad to be here We have been building animatronics now for 40 years we actually celebrated our 40th anniversary July 25th of this year and We're the largest company in the world that provides animatronics to theme parks and museums and stores and things of that nature worldwide Yeah audio animatronics kind of the history that starts I believe with early Disney theme park and those rides people who are familiar with that Yeah, and you guys were following along working alongside that progression Yeah Disney kind of wrote the book on modern-day animatronics back in the 60s with Lincoln in the World's Fair And that's kind of why we did Lincoln That's he's been kind of a important figure as far as you know it's inspirational to me as a child seeing Lincoln at Disneyland, so You know we've kind of followed along in the development of animatronics And we kind of gone out on our own and to really make something special that's never been done before This is the most complex human head that said than built in history We try to blur the line between real and and mechanical It's what we call the illusion of life that's what we work to create here, and I think he's a good example of our latest attempts at a Simulated human expressive face. I'd say corner hole productions is on to something here People they make whom to say what you want to do To blur that line so create that illusion it seems to me there are two things going on one is the the make of? Design the fabrication of that's just the skin and the face and then second is the mechanics inside I imagine both of those have changed drastically over your four years working. Can you walk me through some of the improvements? What did they? look like when Walt Disney made an Abraham Lincoln or two years ago versus what you guys can make now well the sculpture that they Had wasn't bad Mechanically it wasn't anywhere as close to this you know. This is this is really difficult to do That's why you don't see them out there in the world. You know mechanically. It's difficult Combining it with the face making the the skin move like a real human face It's really hard and trying to make it look just like a real person All the colors the skins the the way the skin is formulated we have special proprietary skins He's got over 40 different actuators close to 45 actuators in his head and his face alone He's got seven neck vertebra that move So he's as close to a real human Mechanical person as you've ever seen in the world nobody's ever been taken really this far And as you and your team are looking at technologies are available now You know new actuators new types of mechanical movements are being designed all the time Are you looking at how much can you fit your constraints over the size of a human head yeah, right? And then you want to pack more in there and devising new ways that they actually interlock and interface with the skin Yeah, well you know it's it's it's difficult because in animatronics. We have what we call the envelope You know if you're doing an animated sparrow or something I mean you can only put it what fits inside the sparrow you know so you know here you have a human head You know the size of a small watermelon or a cantaloupe, you know you have to put 40 actuators in there and they all have to do things that make it look real and Respond realistically he can look you know happy or sad or frustrated or angry He can talk and and you know announce he eight syllables he can move his lips to actually form words And to make all that work mechanically is is really tough And I have a lot of wonderful people here that are very talented making this stuff work And when you talk about something like a sparrow yes the size, or you know something That's not humid is gonna be a different shape but also the requirements what the viewer expects of the performance is going to be different in terms of the performance of a human someone, that's recognizable in history so if I got a list of all the facial expressions that you want like a dream list of We do we create lists of expressions we're looking for and then we have you know with the 42 different movements that we have and like I Say in that range because it does vary, but we have the ability to create. You know literally millions of different expressions because you know 42 can infinitely create, you know any number of expressions You know everybody knows what a face looks like you know everybody you see that every day and you know we have to follow a lot of the same rules we had to make the eyes as realistic as possible because when You walk up to an animated figure just like a human you instinctively go right for the eyes and so it was very important for us to make highly realistic eyes and You know getting into the mouth about seeing words, and you know all the different colors and the punched hair This is all real human hair on him actually and It's uh? It's a it's a whole lot of people involved you know everywhere from sculpting all the way on through to you know the eye making and mechanics and the Computers and the electronics to run it It's just as crazy complex and also has an attraction piece with so many movements You're also allowing the order to be closer And you know if they keep the distance and you're sure and I mean we're right up to its face And I'm looking at its eyes, and yes, I I know it's it's a Mac But it's some of these movements are incredibly realistic well Thank you. We appreciate that he can he can do so many things and we have You know the each each funk has its own computer so there there are close to along with the program computers They're close to 50 computers running all at the same time to make this happen and they all fit inside of his podium you know so the miniaturization of electronics and the advances in plastics and the advances Advances in servo motors that you know aircraft quality servo motors Because you know we have to make this stuff last for years and years in a theme-park application. You know but if you get him in the right speech and right environment he gets teary-eyed and We hope to evoke that same those same emotions from the audience You know we like to if he laughs we want people to laugh if he cries want people to cry you know so That's what we're trying to do kind of By creating the illusion of life of our animatronics. Do you also work the other way around feedback from the audience? I know you have an operator right now running it But do you imagine the future animatronics respond to how the audience their expressions their their voice sure Well the person that's running it now is just just telling it like to be happy or sad or the reason I this is all a Program that's running that the figures creating, but we have what we're developing is an AI type Situation you know you get like a Siri type thing attached to it We do have we do have characters that have and we have developed where they can lock on to you. Eye to eye And they have the ability to so they'll track you they have the ability to identify you through facial recognition So we're working on things where they'll actually be able to be interactive with you But so we're controlling it by saying you know run a particular program, but he's not a puppet He's an actual figure That's functioning under you know Controls that are basically embedded in him and because this is a bus you're focusing on the head I mean you do animatronics of all different shapes and sizes is your dream one day a type of full-body and We're doing that now. Yeah, we're doing that now all we have done countless full bodies And we've done human characters all over the world hundreds of them in fact. We've built over 5,000 animatronics here You know nearly 500 for the Disney theme parks worldwide Worked in 34 different countries we have figures all over the world lot of them are human and that This one's special in that it is so expressive and We're in the midst of creating a new body for him that is fully electric that has capabilities that have never been seen before either so when we combine the two it's gonna be quite an amazing figure and That'll be happening real soon We've also gone on to develop the next generation of human expressive head, too So we've been working on that for some time now, and we're gonna make this even better. Oh yeah Oh, yeah, what's on your bucket? Well. You know every time we design something like this or build something like this you know just like any project you spend a year building something you get to the end and you've got a Five-page list of everything that you'd have done differently and how you'd have made it better You know so we have to keep going here. We have to keep doing R&D, but you know hopefully someday You'll walk into our lobby and you'll sign in and say hello to the Receptionist and then later on will tell you that that wasn't even a real person that you were talking to and we want to really Fool people and for most people who go to attractions go to theme parks They may not know that this is work that you and your company have done But they definitely see it improving over time Sure things like this may make it into a Disney park or your local attraction it could very well You know and people the lot of our clients and that's fine And they don't like to let you know others know that we do a lot of what they do because it's if they you know That's their their names on it you know, but we're happy to be behind the scenes We're happy to be developing new and unique things like this that that really take theme parks ahead into the future that in places They've never gone. Thank you so much Turner for sure a little back story on what you do here Yeah, thank you for introducing me to Lincoln. Yeah, well. He's glad to meet you too. Thank you. Thank you You

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 1,698,510

Keywords: tested, testedcom, garner holt, animatronics, disney, abraham lincoln, robots, robotics, animation, realistic, president, lincoln, abraham lincoln animatronic, abraham lincoln robot, disney animatronics, animatronic abraham lincoln, garner holt productions, hall of presidents, abe lincoln, lincoln animatronic, realistic robot, special effects, expressive robot, human robot, robot head, tested favorite things, robots for kids

Id: F1PI1FOYJoM

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2017