With the 2017 Game Developers Conference right around the corner, organizers want to make sure you know about a neat animation talk from folks who build actual robots that's taking place at the show..

In their GDC 2017 talk on "Cozmo: Animation Pipeline for a Physical Robot", Anki's Daria Jerjomina and Molly Jameson will explain how, in designing the real-life robot Cozmo, Anki used real-world physics so there was no "cheating", and they had to adjust their way of thinking about assets accordingly.

This session presents an overview of the asset pipeline on Cozmo, a complex, physical, game-playing robot, with over 300 parts, powered by a mobile app. This session will also describe the complexities of using data from Maya to transfer animation onto something with physical constraints.

Jameson and Jerjomina will also discuss the tools built for fast animator iteration, scripts for testing, debugging, how it eventually translates to physical movement and other workflow improvements throughout the development cycle. They will review the process for streaming audio and animation data to the robot and when programmatic corrections were required, so you're sure to learn something new!

For more details on this and other talks taking place at GDC 2017, head over to the conference Session Scheduler. For more information on GDC 2017, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

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