Hasta La Gadget!

Hmmm, is it me, or is Disney making a slight shift from just churning out cartoons (as well as new Star Wars movies) by working on technologically advanced ideas for future toys? Well, that seems to be the case as we had already looked at a project which allowed one to generate enough electricity to power an LED simply by rubbing against a special kind of paper. This time around, we have distortion-free curved displays that were developed by a 3D printer which is capable of creating fiber optic cables. Project Papillon was talked about in July earlier this year, but it seems that Disney’s designers have managed to work on a cute new eye for its real world toys which will offer a wider range of designs through the separation of the light source from the display screen itself – all without having to worry about distortion, of course.

You just have to watch the view above to experience it fully, where Disney’s demonstration left no doubt for the viewers that they are able to accurately emulate the eyes of their cartoon characters. Take for instance the pupils which are able to swap from normal shapes to other items such as dollar signs and hearts, which will respectively evoke the emotion of greed and romance.

Disney Brings Papillon To A New Level original content from Ubergizmo.

Disney’s forte would be their cartoons – and one thing about cartoons that we know of would be this; they come with extremely attractive eyes. Disney has come up with a new technology that they call Papillon, which happens to be a bundle of optical fibers that have been printed with the Papillon 3D printing tech. Using this particular technique, researchers realized that they are able to project an image on one end of the bundle, while making it appear at the other end. In a nutshell, the Papillon technology enables displays of emotions in physical toys as well as robots which will be able to match those that are often found in cartoons and animated shows.

For instance, when one character is in love with another cartoon character, you will see a literal heart appear in the eyes, or a dollar sign that denotes greed. Papillon’s technology has been touted to deliver an incredible amount of accuracy that enables the aforementioned displayed images to appear without looking distorted. Disney’s very own research webpage mentioned, “Papillon is based on a set of algorithms that implements classic Fibonacci spirals and Voronoi tessellation for efficient packing of fibers on a surface of an eye and in the bundle. This allows creating arbitrary curved display surfaces while minimizing visible artifacts, such as light distortions on the edges of the eye. The resulting technology is effective in designing compact, efficient displays of a small size and shape that can have a broad range of applications.”

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It | Disney’s Papillon Tech Offers Robots Come With Expressive Eyes original content from Ubergizmo.