While much of the United States suffers through an extended winter, in Glendale, California, it’s another story. Sunny and warm on an afternoon at Walt Disney Imagineering R&D in mid-March, it was the perfect setting for meeting summer-loving snowman Olaf of Disney’s juggernaut Frozen franchise.
Olaf — in robotic form and primed for theme park appearances — debuted last week in Los Angeles and is now being showcased at Nvidia’s GTC 2026 AI conference in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Watch this: I Met Disney’s New Robot Olaf (Sneak Peek)
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will be joined onstage by Olaf during his keynote Monday kicking off the company’s annual tech conference. The robotic snowman runs simulations on Nvidia GPUs and is powered by Nvidia chips. Olaf was brought to life using the Newton Physics Engine, an open-source system developed by Nvidia, Google DeepMind and Disney Research that enables high-performance robot simulations to run quickly on GPUs.
Much like the free-roaming droids developed by Walt Disney Imagineering that you can find in Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge at both Disneyland and Disney World, Olaf will walk around theme parks to greet guests and interact with them.
Walt Disney Studios animators helped create the training data used to teach Olaf to walk in simulation — not just to walk, but to emulate his signature snowman shuffle.
When CNET senior producer Jesse Orrall interacted with Olaf during a press preview at Imagineering R&D HQ last week, the AI-powered robot was controlled by an operator. His voice responses were selected by that operator, and he was somewhat limited in what he could say. Olaf can also follow a script as part of a show, with plans to expand those capabilities over time.
“We had our sights set on creating a real-life Olaf for a long time,” Josh Gorin, Disney executive R&D Imagineer, told Orrall. “Technology finally caught up.”
He lamented that you can’t give the Olaf robot warm hugs just yet — though Disney acknowledges it is very huggable and hopes that will change.
Iridescent fibers woven into Olaf’s body give him a sparkly, snowy look. His mouth and eyes are fully articulated, while his stick arms, carrot nose, buttons, eyebrows and hair attach magnetically, allowing for character gags in which his body parts can be pulled off and reattached.
Olaf debuts March 29 with the opening of the World of Frozen land at Disneyland Paris and will later appear at Hong Kong Disneyland. There’s no word yet on when the beloved snowman might make appearances stateside at Disneyland or Walt Disney World.
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