The opportunities for making magic at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event are virtually unlimited but I never imagined I would get the chance to actually CONTROL one of the amazingly adorable BDX droids from Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge!

Here’s what I learned after getting the chance to control an actual Star Wars BDX droid at the 2024 D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event.

In chatting with one of the Imagineers on-site at the Disney Experiences pavilion, I found myself with the opportunity to literally get my hands on one of the controllers for my new green droid bestie BD-Grek! With instruction from the Imagineer, I got to help Grek take some steps and to turn his head to scan the environment for any dark sided threats! No gorgiles or slykicks were detected.

We also learned quite a bit from research scientist Moritz Baecher from Disney Research. These BDX droids have 14 actuators to give them their personality-filled movements — there’s 4 actuators in the head and neck and additional five actuators in each leg. Their eyes are illuminated with color-changing LEDs and they have an additional light source on their head to give visual cues to know when they are scanning or looking at something.

They are powered with removable rechargeable batteries and feature on-board real-time computers (one in the head and one in the body) meaning all of their processing is done within the unit itself. They have four speakers which give them their unique and adorable sounds.

While the droids are not fully autonomous (they are controlled by an operator using a remote control) they DO have some very powerful computing going on that helps them maintain their balance. During development, thousands of simultaneously simulation environments were created to help trained the computer systems to maintain balance when walking in real-world environments. This means that they can walk and jump without falling over. The promise for this growing technology and how it can be used in every-day guest interactions is truly limitless!

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See it for Yourself

D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event takes place in Anaheim from August 9 – 11, 2024. 

MORE INFO: Check out all of our coverage for D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event at MouseInfo.com/D23

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