Is This NEW Universal Patent a CLUE About Epic Universe?

There’s a NEW theme park coming to Orlando!

Universal Studios is building a THIRD theme park — Epic Universe — that will be home to new lands, attractions, restaurants, and so much more. We’ve been keeping tabs on the construction progress of the new park, and, it appears Universal has filed yet another patent that could be for Epic Universe.

Epic Universe is the future home of Illumination and DreamWorks content (hello, Minions!) along with Super Nintendo World. Not only that, but there will be a shopping and dining district with hotels, too.

Universal Orlando Universal’s Epic Universe Logo ©Universal/Comcast

A new theme park means NEW technology, and Universal seems to always be trying to come up with the latest and greatest ways to innovate and make its attractions fresh. A patent was recently filed for “Digital Character Interacting with Customer in Physical Realm.”

The patent is described as “Systems and methods for controlling performance of a digital character depicted at a display device are disclosed. According to at least one embodiment, a method for controlling performance of a digital character depicted at a display device includes: determining a presence of a person located in a physical environment; and in response to determining the presence of the person, facilitating control of the performance of the digital character depicted at the display device by a human operator, by an artificial intelligence (AI) game-engine, or by a combination thereof.”

Essentially, the technology would allow a real-life person to use audio and video capture devices which could then be used to “digital characters” are able to interact with theme park goers. And, from what we can tell by the drawings in the patent, it may have something to do with Kung-Fu Panda.

Since Kung-Fu Panda is a DreamWorks production, it makes sense that we might see the characters at Epic Universe. But this time, it looks like the characters will come to life in a new way. The human behind-the-scenes can ask a question that can be displayed via the digital character, making it appear as though the character is directly speaking to a guest.

The operator might also be able to shift their gaze to look toward a guest, which would cause the digital character to do the same. Similarly, if a guest reaches toward the display, the operator can match the movement and the character will follow (Orlando Business Journal).

Back in November 2022, we saw another patent filed by Universal for “Systems and Methods for Dynamic Projection Mapping for Animated Figures.” The company seeks to patent a new process for projecting features and movement onto animatronic figures. Sounds a lot like projection mapping, because it is!

We’ll be interested to see how Universal puts this new tech to work in the theme parks. While we wait, you can check out these posts about other inventions in the works at Disney and Universal:

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