Some people are worth melting for

If you’ve been to a Disney theme park, chances are you’ve seen your favorite characters walking around meeting guests, and signing autographs. For many years, the only kinds of characters you could meet were either portrayed by an actor dressed up as a character, like Ariel from The Little Mermaid, or mascots, like Mickey Mouse. In recent years, they’ve developed meet and greets with robots that can communicate with guests, including a talking, but stationary, Lightning McQueen robot.

On March 29th, Disney debuted an Olaf animatronic robot at Disney Adventure World in Paris. He is Disney’s first free-roaming robot in their parks, created in collaboration with AI company NVIDIA. While he is supposed to be able to walk and talk around the park without giving away that he is a robot, he malfunctioned on his first day of operation that begs the question of whether he was ready to debut to the public.