Disney to Create Walking Animatronic Dinosaur

nakhla writes "I came across this article discussing Disney's plans to create an animatronic dinosaur that can roam free through it's Disney's California Adventure park. Disney's Imagineering unit has been working on the technology for several years now. While short on technical details, the article does mention that it will be able to interact with guests in numerous ways. Hopefully it won't go berzerk like the animatronic characters in that old Simpsons episode!" No, hopefully it will go berzerk!

Comments

Popcorn hands?

[phorm]

So in other words... you should probably wash the butter and salt residue off your fingers before putting your hands near its face.
If my rats (deemed some of the smarter rodents) can't figure out the difference between a food-coated finger and actual food... I'm not about to trust some disney AI!

Not a biped

[Charles Dodgeson]

Tyrannosaurus, of course - is there any other kind?

I don't think that even Disney could pull off a biped. Mabye the could have a T. rex use its tail, but my bet is a protoceratops. They look enough like a triceretops to be familiar, but don't have all those horns to get in the way of customer interaction.

But they might surprise us with a less familiar animal. A Maiasaurus would be so cuddly as to destroy the effect of having a dinosaur in the first place, but there are pleny of cool looking obscure things that they could use.