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[Ayala] My job
is to bring characters to life.

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I am a perfectionist.

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To make a character believable,
every detail counts.

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This audio-animatronic head
that you're looking at here

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has all these little mechanisms to make
the face move and create expressions.

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As humans, we all have these unique things
that we do that defines

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that we are alive
and that we have a personality.

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Of course, we have the eyes, the eyebrows,

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that allows to express sadness,
happiness, thinking.

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If you can make an animatronic
look like it's thinking,

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and people think that that character
you developed has thought,

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that's when life emerges.

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I am Alfredo Ayala.

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I am with Walt Disney Imagineering
Research & Development,

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and I am an R&D executive.

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At R&D,
we want to apply the latest technology,

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wanna learn about the latest technology,

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and see how can it help us tell stories
in different mediums and different ways.

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[Walt Disney] When we needed a cast
of lifelike figures

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for our most ambitious project,
Disneyland,

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we created a new type of animation, so new
that we had to invent a new name for it.

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[squawking]

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Audio-animatronics?

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Right, audio-animatronics.

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[Ayala] Audio-animatronic robotics
really evolved in really big steps.

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It goes back to when Walt introduced
Lincoln in the 1964 World's Fair.

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It really astonished people because people
just knew Lincoln through books.

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We've gone from just deliverance
of performance

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to actually having the audio-animatronic
robotics be aware, respond

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and be reactive to our guests.

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I've been here with the company
for 25 years.

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Throughout my career,
I worked on some of the most fun things

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in material science and robotics.

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I look at the motion of the character.

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I focus on how it delivers the speech,
the sounds or the songs it's delivering.

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The costume has to be right,
the hair has to be right,

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the texture of the skin has to be right.

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For me that is the key
to making something come alive.

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If we find that
that robot's not doing that,

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we go and correct it,
and we work with it until we get it right.

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This here is Destini.

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-...look into the future, my friend?
-Yes.

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[Ayala] The Destini project
was actually a very fun project.

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The question we were asking ourselves was,

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"What happens when our characters become
reactive and responsive to our guests?"

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-[chuckles]
-Now let me show you what I see.

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[Ayala] This took our robotics
to a new level.

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Basically, we started applying
artificial intelligence to our robots.

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Now when people come up and they say,

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"Where did you get
such a bright and shiny future?"

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Who are you going to thank? Huh?

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-Destini.
-Yes! Destini!

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[Ayala] Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters.

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That was a great learning lesson for us

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because we had to create an animation
that brought the vehicle to life.

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We were able to use
traditional animation software

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in order to program
the vehicles themselves.

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[singing in Na'vi]

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[Ayala] So the Na'vi Shaman
was a challenge for us.

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She had to be expressive.

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And so, we had to develop
a new type of skin material

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that would allow us
to have that flexibility in the skin

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that makes it look like she's alive.

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This is actually an experimental setup
that we had done of the lower face

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to better understand how the lips move
and how the--

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It's gonna announce every word she says
when she was singing in the attraction.

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We wanted to tell our guests

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that this character is not just there
present as a robotic,

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but it has a soul sitting there,
and it's sharing that soul with you.

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In order to do that,
she had to have fluid motions.

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So, instead of going
with our traditional hydraulic ways

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of moving mechanical systems,

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we started using electric motors
to deliver that smooth motion.

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And people that saw her
thought she was alive.

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As a perfectionist,
it's always really hard to let go.

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You wanna make it perfect
to what your vision is,

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and at one point you have to stop,

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and that's usually the hardest time
because it's like letting go of your baby.

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In that cross section
between art and science,

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Imagineers have to be in both worlds.

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As an Imagineer and a scientist,

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you want to take that artistic thing
and be able to represent it

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in the mechanical world,
in the electronic world

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and make sure that it reads
like you're looking at a moving painting.

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Imagineering to me
is to ask that question, "What if?"

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To look at something and say, "What if?"
And then make it come true.

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In a nutshell, that's what we do.