[Peteragain]

The real reason it won't end up in a park is not the engineering. The problem is the same one as NPCs in computer games: synthetic characters are, to date, just really transparent and boring. The real research question is why.

[93po]

Every single non-face character in Disney parks doesn't even talk to guests?

[shkkmo]

I guess that's why most computer games don't have NPCs...Oh wait there's entire computer games built entirely around interacting with synthetic NPCs.

There are, of course, limitations to synthetic characters. Even with those limitations there are plenty of entertaining experiences to crafted.

The real challenges are around maintaining and safely operating automous robots around children in a way that isn't too expensive. These constraints place far more limits than those on synthetic characters in video games.

[squigz]

Most people aren't paying 100s or 1000s of dollars to interact with NPCs in video games. If they were, they'd probably expect a lot more and get bored of it quicker.

> The real challenges are around maintaining and safely operating automous robots around children in a way that isn't too expensive.

This is one of the challenges, but only one. The one GP outlined is still very much real - see the Defunctland video on Living Characters for some older examples, but for a recent example, there's the DS-09 droid from Galactic Starcruiser.