The Walt Disney Company, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich are opening collaborative research centers that will be located in Zurich, Switzerland and Pittsburgh, PA. The Pittsburgh lab will be in the near vicinity of CMU’s School of Computer Science, Robotics Institute, and Entertainment Technology Center. Advanced research and development in graphics, animation, and autonomous behavior relevant to new forms of entertainment for Disney’s multiple Parks and Media networks will be conducted. Disney plans to utilize knowledge and development from the lab for its Parks and Resorts division, Media Networks, ESPN, Disney Feature Animation, Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Interactive media group, and Pixar Animation Studios. The planned Zurich lab will be the only Disney-related laboratory in existence not located within the U.S.

Disney acquired Pixar Animation Studios in 2006. CEO of Pixar Steve Jobs is now the largest shareholder of Disney. Professor of Robotics and Computer Science Jessica Hodgins will be the Director of the Disney Research effort.

The Disney labs will conduct research and development on computer animation, computational cinematography, autonomous interactive characters, robotics, data mining, and user interfaces. Disney has committed to five years of funding a director, seven to eight principle researchers, and additional instructors, scientific consultants, collaborators, and academic interns. An early initiative is to develop methods for people to interact with autonomous characters, either virtual or robotic. Jessica Hodgins, professor of computer science and robotics and director of Disney Research, Pittsburgh, explained: “We’ll be looking for ways to sense what a person is doing or thinking so that the character can respond appropriately. Whether the character is a robot or a virtual creation, the interaction issues are the same. We need to figure out what sensors to build and how to interpret and respond to human behavior.”

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, more specifically, ETH Zurich has a tradition of research in computational methods and computer systems. Professor Markus Gross, head of ETH Zurich’s Computer Graphics Lab in The Department of Computer Science, noted that “our research will explore novel algorithms to bring both traditional animation and 3D computer animation to the next level of perfection. We will investigate how artistic knowledge and rules can be incorporated into computer-assisted production and content creation. Additionally, we will design the next generation of cinematographic technology.” Professor Gross will head the collaborative lab in Zurich.

The focus of research from both labs is expected to be utilized across multiple business units of the Disney Enterprise. Intel, Apple, and Google all have collaborative research labs at CMU.

In December of 2005, Google opened a CMU research office which primarily focused on engineering, research, and development. Google selected Andrew Moore, Professor of Robotics and Computer Science and co-founder and Director of the Auton Lab at CMU, to run the Pittsburgh office. At Google’s Collaborative Innovation Center, over 75 engineers have been hired from a local and national pool to work on infrastructure processing measures– such as assuring that search queries net correct results, product searches results, and correct display of advertising. The group also works on Google Sky, a plug-in for Google Earth that enables users to visualize stars and galaxies. As well, the group works on Dapper, a low-overhead system for monitoring the performance of large, distributed applications constructed from collections of services and running on hundreds or thousands of machines.

Current Collaborative Innovation tenants at CMU include: Apple, Google, Intel Research Lab-Pittsburgh, 3Ksoft, the Center for Innovative Robotics, the Parallel Data Lab’s Data Center Observatory, Carnegie Mellon CyLab, the Software Engineering Institute’s Network Systems Survivability program– which includes the world-renowned CERT Coordination Center, and the Korean Information Security Agency.