Chinese Company Teams with Intel to 3D Print Large BunnyPeople™ Robot Integrated With RealSense

Back in the late 90’s Intel Corporation gained quite a few new fans with their funny TV ads, featuring clean-room workers wearing “bunny-suits” and dancing to 1970s disco music. The suits, which look a lot like something out of a 1950s science-fiction film, garnered enough attention for Intel for them to create 8-inch tall dolls which they sold for $6.99 a piece. These little “BunnyPeople” became what you may refer to as Intel’s mascots.

This year at the annual Intel Developer Forum (IDF15), held in Shenzhen, China, Intel teamed with a Chinese 3D printing company to create a rather intuitive 21st century version of the famed BunnyPeople. The 2015 version of the Intel Mascot is much more advanced than the original 1997 stuffed animal version.

This years version is a 1 meter tall robot which can interact, tell stories, and even pick out and identify different animals. The robot was quite the attraction at IDF15 with many people stopping to take pictures with it. Little did they know that this version of the BunnyMan was actually 3D printed and equipped with Intel’s Real Sense technology.

Intel and 3D printing company Nanjing Profeta Tech., spent just 2 months designing, 3D printing, and installing this incredible robot with the needed electronic components. This was about 1/3 of the time it would have taking to create using more traditional manufacturing methods. At the same time, 3D printing allowed the team of designers to fabricate miniature versions of the robot prior to creating the full-scaled final product.

“3D printing is quite magical when used in production,” Nanjing Profeta Tech. “It is much faster, compared to traditional industrial processes. Not only is it less complicated, but also much easier to produce, with less production difficulties arising. With traditional means, once produced, any structural problems that arise mean that you need to start all over again. This is not the case with 3D printing.”

Nanjing Profeta Tech. has created other amazing works of art using 3D printing as well, including a full 3D printed Iron Man suit. Teaming with Intel though, allowed them to create a fully functional robot, that happened to be the talk of the town at the Intel Developer Forum. It should be interesting to see if Intel builds upon this, and perhaps we will once again see BunnyPeople making appearances on TV commercials around the world.

What do you think about this unique 3D printed robot? Discuss in the 3D Printed BunnyPeople Forum thread on 3DPB.com.