CMU’s Disney lab closes its doors
Research relationship expected to continue
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Carnegie Mellon University’s most magical tenant has left the building.
Disney Research, the innovation arm of Burbank, Calif.-based The Walt Disney Company, has vacated its research lab at the Collaborative Innovation Center on CMU’s Oakland campus.
Byron Spice, spokesman for CMU’s School of Computer Science, confirmed the move in an email.
Abby Simmons, associate director of media relations at CMU, said in an email that the university does not comment on individual corporate agreements, but provided the following statement:
“Corporate partnerships are highly valuable to Carnegie Mellon University and the companies with which we work. Together, we propel cutting-edge research and bring groundbreaking innovations to market. These mutually beneficial partnerships also provide educational opportunities for current employees and offer CMU students invaluable realword experience.”
After repeated requests for comment, Disney did not respond, but the Disney Research website lists Los Angeles, Calif., and Zurich, Switzerland, as participating research labs with no mention of Pittsburgh.
Still, there’s an expectation that work between The Walt Disney Company and individual research teams at CMU will continue, sans dedicated lab.
Disney Research, which is based in Glendale, Calif., studies human-computer interaction, machine learning, data analytics,
robotics, visual computing, and materials and fabrication.
In the past, CMU and Disney have worked together on computer techniques that quickly produce realistic animated facial expressions and body motions.
The Collaborative Innovation Center — originally a project between CMU, the Regional Industrial Development Corporation, the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the state — was built in 2005 to make space for university-related tech companies in the region, as well as corporate partners looking to work with the university to design commercial products and concepts.
It was a way to team up with corporations and take research ideas to market.
The 127,636-square-foot, dry-lab research building was completed in 2005, according to the RIDC website. Apple and Intel moved in shortly thereafter.
In 2006, it became Google’s first home before moving to Walnut Capital’s Bakery Square development in Larimer. After Google left, Disney moved into the 20,000 square feet of open basement space in 2008.
Disney began a research and development lab that specialized in computer animation and robotics for The Walt Disney Company and affiliated companies such as ESPN and Pixar Animation Studios.
While research was conducted at the Disney-CMU lab, there was also a precedent for outside teamwork between the actual Disney corporation and the university’s researchers.
Baymax, the star of Disney-animated film “Big Hero 6,” was born out of CMU when a creator looking for a huggable robot prototype found a soft robotic arm inside Chris Atkeson’s robotics lab in 2011.
Despite Disney moving its physical presence out of Pittsburgh, it doesn’t seem that this brand of research and cooperation with CMU staff has waned.
Drew Davidson, director of CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center, said students had worked in the Disney Research lab, previously, but most of the center’s work was with The Walt Disney Company,directly.
“Our expectation is that our relationship will remain the same,” he wrote in an email.
Disney Research is still reaping the benefits of the collaboration with CMU.
Just this week, CMU and Disney Enterprises were assigned two joint patents, though both were applied for in fall 2015.
The first is for “photometric three-dimensional facial capture and relighting,” which is a method for generating a 3-D surface. A given object will be photographed many times by at least two cameras as the item is illuminated by at least two sets of red-green-blue lights that will create a 3-D surface. Ultimately, the images will be aligned and processed to create a final picture.
Creating these three-dimensional depictions of objects is “invaluable” to the video game and movie industries, per the patent.
A second patent for “automatic object detection” aids in creating a device that senses electrical signals conducted by the human body, which can be worn as a wrist band.
According to the patent background, it helps in understanding people’s interactions with objects, which offer “rich, contextual information closely reflecting one’s immediate environment and activity.”
Perhaps it’ll be useful in the next “Star Wars” film.