⚡ Speakers ⚡

More speakers incoming! — check back soon.

Eric Allard
Special Effects Supervisor
Founder, Allfx, Inc.
Creator of Johnny 5 (Short Circuit)

Eric Allard is an Academy Award–nominated special effects supervisor and the founder of Allfx, Inc. Since 1983 he has led live-action effects on high-visibility features, television and commercials, working with some of the industry's finest craftsmen.

He is best known as the creator of Johnny 5, the robot built for the film Short Circuit, and of the original Energizer Bunny, which Allfx designed, built and brought to life in over 100 commercials. His other credits include Demolition Man, Alien Resurrection, Stuart Little and The Matrix Reloaded, creatures such as the Zuni Doll in Trilogy of Terror II and characters for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, and TV series including Max Headroom and Alien Nation.

Eric began as an artist and maker, served in US Army Special Forces, and worked his way up in Hollywood from carpenter to running his own effects company. He is a US patent holder in robotics and now consults on real-world humanoid robots through Robonality™, helping make future robots more user-friendly and likable.

allfx.com · IMDb · LinkedIn

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Will Knight
Designer, Animator & Illustrator
Figment Ltd

Will Knight supports organisations to communicate complexity with clarity, emotion and purpose.

His background spans industrial design, animation, film and research-led storytelling, and shapes how he helps teams turn insight and innovation into compelling visual narratives.

His skills lie in the ability to listen deeply, understand quickly, and interpret complex ideas with creativity, flexibility, and a drive to 'do'. He works fast, adapts fast, and brings a craft-driven approach that delivers human, engaging and memorable outcomes.

Whether visualising research, directing an animation, or capturing ideas in real time, he combines commercial understanding with creative execution to help people and organisations express their ideas with confidence and impact.

willknight.com · LinkedIn

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Moshe Mahler
Faculty at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University
Principal and Owner, BIG eMotion Technologies

Moshe Mahler is an award-winning professional innovator, animator, and storyteller whose work has been featured in attractions at Disney Parks and Resorts and shown worldwide at prestigious venues including SIGGRAPH, UIST, Comic Con, and Ars Electronica. Mahler's animated short film, “The Art of Weightlessness” won SIGGRAPH's Best in Show Award in 2024, and qualified for an Academy Award. For nearly a decade, Mahler led The Creative Technology Team at Disney Research of The Walt Disney Company, where he served as the Principal Artist. Under his supervision, the team worked hand in hand with elite Research Scientists to invent and utilize new technologies across the Walt Disney Company, collaborating with Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Disney Consumer Products, Disney Television Animation, Imagineering, and more. Mahler has authored more than a dozen technical paper publications at premiere conferences and is an inventor of four issued patents. Moshe currently holds a Faculty position at The Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon University and is a Principal and Owner of BIG eMotion Technologies.

Moshe received his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003. While completing his artistic studies, Moshe joined Stage 3, an interdisciplinary research group at Carnegie Mellon, created and led by Prof. Randy Pausch. Upon graduation, Mahler joined The Carnegie Mellon Graphics Lab as a Senior Animation Designer under the direction of Prof. Jessica Hodgins. From 2011-2018 Moshe was a creative technology lead for Disney Research of The Walt Disney Company. Moshe was also a founding member of Tulco Labs, Thomas Tull's tech studio.

Moshe has contributed to dozens of publications in the computer graphics and animation fields. His art works and animated films have been featured in a number of venues internationally, including SIGGRAPH 2005, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2023, and 2024.

momahler.com · bigemotiontech.com · LinkedIn

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2026 Objective!

We are excited to announce our 11th Can we build Baymax? workshop!
This year's workshop will focus on humanoids for characters, performance, and creative applications.

Baymax is a humanoid robot character in the Disney animation “Big Hero 6.” It is a healthcare robot with an inflatable body, capable of walking, bumping into surrounding objects, manipulating, learning new skills, talking, and physically interacting with people. In the movie, students from the Nerd Lab in the fictional San Fransokyo Institute of Technology develop many interesting technologies including Baymax. However, in the real world, it is not easy to build and teach such a robot.

This year we turn to the expressive side of humanoids: robots as characters and performers, and the creative applications that push our hardware, control and interaction research in new directions. Topics include:

Since our first workshop in 2015, the series has taken place at the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots every year. We invite you to contribute and to participate in this workshop! baymax.org



Previous Workshops:

2025: What Can We Build Today? & BYOB (Bring Your Own Baymax)
2024: Learning and Data Collection for Skillful Humanoid Robots
2023: Let’s talk about Safe, Commercially Viable Humanoids!
2022: Education and Open Source for Humanoid Robots
2021: Superhuman Abilities in Current Humanoids
2019: Human-Humanoid Communication
2018: Fail-Safe HW & SW and Learning in Humanoid Robots
2017: Design and Control for Soft Human-Robot Interaction
2016: Making Hard Robots Soft: Sensors, Skin and Airbags
2015: Soft Robotics and Safe Human-Robot Interaction in Humanoids

Workshop Schedule

The workshop schedule will be posted here once speakers are confirmed.

Organizers


Christopher G. Atkeson

I am a Professor in the Robotics Institute and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. My life goal is to fulfill the science fiction vision of machines that achieve human levels of competence in perceiving, thinking, and acting. A more narrow technical goal is to understand how to get machines to generate and perceive human behavior. I use two complementary approaches, exploring humanoid robotics and human aware environments. Building humanoid robots tests our understanding of how to generate human-like behavior, and exposes the gaps and failures in current approaches.

build-baymax.org

Joohyung Kim

Joohyung Kim is currently an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on design and control for humanoid robots, systems for motion learning in robot hardware, and safe human-robot interaction. He received BSE and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) from Seoul National University, Korea, in 2001 and 2012. He was a Research Scientist in Disney Research from 2013 to 2019. Prior to joining Disney, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University for the DARPA Robotics Challenge in 2013. From 2009 to 2012, he was a Research Staff Member in Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Korea, developing biped walking controllers for humanoid robots.

KIMLAB (Kinetic Intelligent Machine LAB)

Jinoh Lee

Jinoh Lee is a Research Scientist with the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany. He received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea, in 2003 (awarded Summa Cum Laude), and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea, in 2012. Prior to joining DLR in 2020, he held the Research Scientist position at the Department of Advanced Robotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Italy. His professional focus is on robotics and control engineering, which include manipulation of highly redundant robots such as dual-arm and humanoids, robust control of nonlinear systems and compliant robotic system control for safe human-robot interaction.

Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics

Aykut Onol

Aykut is a research scientist in the Robotics Division at Toyota Research Institute, where he develops capabilities to enable human-centered robots that can adapt quickly to evolving environments and preferences through interaction and continually improve with experience. His prior work at TRI includes developing generative manipulation policies for the Atlas humanoid in collaboration with Boston Dynamics and advancing contact-rich whole-body manipulation as part of the Punyo team. He earned his PhD from Northeastern University in 2020, where his research focused on planning through contact. Before joining TRI, he worked at Root AI on mobile manipulation for greenhouse harvesting.

Katsu Yamane

Dr. Katsu Yamane is a Principal Research Scientist at Path Robotics Inc. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering in 1997, 1999, and 2002 respectively from the University of Tokyo, Japan. Prior to joining Path Robotics in 2022, he held research scientist positions at Bosch Research North America, Honda Research Institute USA, and Disney Research, Pittsburgh. He was also an Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo, and a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. While his current research focuses on manipulation planning and control for manufacturing, he is still passionate about humanoid robot control and motion synthesis, physical human-robot interaction, character animation, and human motion simulation.

katsuyamane.com

Alex Alspach

Alex is building and deploying useful, fun-to-work-alongside robots as the Robot Character and Industrial Design Lead at Walden Robotics.

Previously, Alex built soft systems for sensing and manipulation at Toyota Research Institute (TRI), and led their Whole-Body Manipulation (“Punyo”) Team. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Drexel University with time spent in the Drexel Autonomous Systems Lab (DASL) and KAIST's HuboLab (in Korea). After graduating, Alex spent two years at SimLab in Seoul developing and marketing tools for manipulation research and developing artists' tools for animating complex, synchronized industrial robots. Prior to joining TRI, Alex developed soft huggable humanoid robots and various other creative robotic systems at Disney Research with Joohyung and Katsu!

alexalspach.com
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