Walt Disney Imagineering R&D (with Disney Research) · legged machine
BDX droids
Small Star Wars-style droids with two 5-DOF legs and a 4-DOF head, largely 3D printed. A Disney Research team in Zurich led the design, shown first at IROS 2023 in Detroit.
- Price
- —Not published
- Height
- —Not published
- Weight
- —Not published
- Payload
- —Not published
- Speed
- —Not published
- Battery
- —Not published
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Why it matters
Expressive bipedal robots trained with reinforcement learning to walk in an animator's style, roaming among theme-park guests.
Real-world use
Tested in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland from October 2023 and later appeared at other Disney parks and events.
Maker
Walt Disney Imagineering R&D (with Disney Research)Company · founded 1952 · Glendale, California, United StatesUnit of Disney Experiences within The Walt Disney Company.
How it stacks up
Against other legged & novel that publish the figure. Pick a measure.
BDX droids has more joints than 50% of the 16 other legged & novel that publish a joints. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
Not published by the maker: height, weight, speed, payload, battery, price.
Public attention
How much public attention BDX droids gets, from open data.
- No Wikipedia article of its own yet
- 3 news stories from reputable press listed on this page
- 1 reported deployment
Measures how much people read and write about a robot, not how good it is. Measured 2026-10-13; same method for every robot. How it is measured
What’s inside
The parts the company has talked about publicly.
- Movement
- Walks on legs · 14 joints
- How it runs
- Assisted. A park performer steers it and triggers its moves with a handheld controller while learned control keeps it balanced and walking.
- Actuators & motors
- Modular hardware and actuators; 4-DoF head and 5-DoF legs
- Materials & build
- Mostly 3D-printed
- AI & software
- Reinforcement learning in simulation that blends animator-authored motion with balance control; puppeteered by an operator in parks
From the maker
BDX droids is the only machine from Walt Disney Imagineering / Disney Research in the atlas.
Walt Disney Imagineering R&D (with Disney Research) also makes 2 humanoids. See every Walt Disney Imagineering R&D (with Disney Research) robot
Watch BDX droids
Made, sold and where
Unit counts are usually company figures; analysts often disagree.
- Price
- Not published
- How to get one
- No official buying page found
- Built
- Several units (three tested at Disneyland in 2023)
- Sold or delivered
- not sold
- Where it is sold or used
- Disney Research Zurich / Walt Disney Imagineering
- Customers and pilots
- Disney parks (Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge)
Where it works
1 reported deployment.
- Pilot
Disneyland Resort · Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, Disneyland · Anaheim · since 2023-10 · 3 units
Disney Imagineers tested roaming BD droids with guests in Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland. Three droids in training on the day reported WDW News Today
News
The latest 3, newest first. Summaries are ours; tap through for the original.
- Disney BDX wins RBR50 recognition
The Robot Report highlighted Disney's RL pipeline for expressive walking characters.
The Robot Report - BD droids tested at Galaxy's Edge
Imagineers tested three BD-style droids in Disneyland's Star Wars land.
WDW News Today - Disney shows emotive walking robot at IROS
Disney Research presented the bipedal character robot at IROS 2023 in Detroit.
IEEE Spectrum
Sources
Figures come from press coverage. Every link below backs something on this page.
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