Disney has a science research wing. And it's f@*%!#g epic!

Books can bring entire worlds alive. And now, Disney Research's Augmented Creativity is trying to go a step further and actually turn books into 3D playgrounds. Disney's innovation takes the basic concept of augmented reality, where real-world environments are digitally, well, augmented, and applies it in incredible ways.

Through their tech, they're able to capture images from books and turn them into 3D. The tech is even able to detect drawing and colouring and turn it into animated 3D in real-time, bringing alive the now-stale colouring book for today's tech-immersed kids.

Disney Research seem to love robots. So much so that they've now come up with epic 3D printed skin for robots. The soft 'skin' isn't just to protect the delicate inner mechanics of the robot. The airtight cavity within responds to air pressure, enabling the robot to hold delicate objects.

That should come in handy when the robots have to wrap their robotic death fingers around our delicate throats, but the actual aim is a lot more noble. The goal is to produce robots that are able to safely interact with children. Disney is even working on producing kid-friendly bipedal robots based on its animated characters. Seems cool...though it could just be the embarrassing backstory behind theT-1000.

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Yeah, when the robot uprising does begin, you can rest assured that Disney Research will be the harbinger of the end. Their scientists just can't get enough when it comes to robots.

Their Zurich wing, the same one that created VertiGo, have also come up with a design system that allows laymen to create mobile 3D printable robots. The programme not only comes with preset designs, it allows the user to modify the morphology, proportions, style of motion, and even the gait of these designs. The programme accordingly customises the presets to make them functionally mobile.

FaceDirector is something that's a lot closer to Disney's more known interests. The software blends separate frames from separate movie takes to create a brand new take based on the directors liking. For a movie studio looking to save money, the programme is genius, allowing for far fewer takes.

It sounds like something that would require facial recognition and motion capture software, but that's the best part - it doesn't. The software even works with basic 2D cam footage.

It's something that's hard to visualise, so make sure you watch the video.

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