At first glance at this video, you'd be forgiven for mistaking it as a clip from Wall-E. But the robot depicted in the footage isn't science fiction - it's very much real. In a video posted by Walt Disney Imagineering, a newly designed bipedal robot walks, struts, dances, and emotes in an impressive display of engineering prowess. The bot also shows off its human interaction skills as it reacts to those around it and even walks behind two children pulling it on a lead. With its expressive head and wiggly antenna, the unnamed robot has been designed to bring the creative designs of animators into the real world using machine learning.

For over 50 years, Disneyland and its sister parks have been a showcase for increasingly technically proficient versions of its "animatronic" characters. First pneumatic and hydraulic, and more recently fully electronic, these figures create a feeling of life and emotion inside rides and attractions, in shows and, increasingly, in interactive ways throughout the parks. The machines they're creating are becoming more active and mobile in order to better represent the wildly physical nature of the characters they portray within the expanding Disney universe. And a recent addition to the pantheon could change the way that characters move throughout the parks and influence how we think about mobile robots at large. I wrote recently about the new tack Disney was taking with self-contained characters that felt more flexible, interactive and, well, alive than "static," pre-programmed animatronics.