Gallery: Disney Invents an Adorable Robot for Making Giant Sand Drawings
ETH Zürich01sand-disney-0002-Layer 7
Disney's newest robot is designed to bring characters to life on beaches.
ETH Zürich02sand-disney-2-0002-Layer 2
The prongs on the rake can be controlled individually, allowing the lines the BeachBot draws to vary from two inches to 15 inches.
ETH Zürich03sand-disney-0000-Layer 9
The robot's bulbous balloon wheels allow it to traverse the entire sandy canvas without leaving tire tracks.
ETH Zürich04sand-disney-2-0003-Layer 1
The laser-based positoning system gives the BeachBot to draw accurately down to the millimeter.
ETH Zürich05sand-disney-0003-Layer 6
Kids will recognize the design cue from the turtles in *Finding Nemo*.
ETH Zürich06sand-disney-2-0001-Layer 3
Like any good Disney project, a wide variety of themes were dreamed up—like this *Cars*-themed casing.
ETH Zürich07sand-disney-0008-Layer 1
The project was led by Paul Beardsley, a Principal Research Scientist at Disney Research Zurich. The team also included Professor Roland Siegwart and a team of students including Lorenz Wellhausen, Timo Müller, Jonathan Huber, Roman Müller, Markus Stäuble, Timon Homberger, Lorenz Wellhausen, Wolf Vollprecht, Manuel Rossegger, Philipp Bühler, and Dominik Rüttimann.
ETH Zürich08sand-disney-0005-Layer 4
Text messages can be programmed into the robot.
