SIGGRAPH 2026: Prolific Disney Inventor Lanny Smoot Inspires Attendees as Keynote Speaker

Disney’s most prolific inventor took to the main stage during SIGGRAPH 2026, giving a fun and inspiring presentation that had attendees reflecting on the power of research, activating emerging technologies, and the value of cross-industry connections to drive technological advancements in one’s career. More than a just a glorified presentation of his catalog of inventions, Smoot also describe the career lessons he’s learned, and the importance of both research and new ideas and the necessity for collaboration between people with disparate talents. It all embraced this year’s theme at SIGGRAPH 2026 - Connections. 

As this year’s SIGGRAPH conference chair, Chris Reddman, explained, Lanny Smoot reflects this year’s focus on connections, connecting imagination, engineering, and storytelling and bridging the physical world with digital concepts.  In fact, Smoot has quite the relationship with SIGGRAPH, having displayed a number of the inventions he’s created at the conference’s Emerging Technologies displays. Though, as he shared with this year’s attendees, “I always take away more than I give” when he attends the event. 

Well, we took away some fun new info about the legendary inventor - who holds over 108 U.S.  patents, more than anyone else ever at The Walt Disney Company - and some surprising tidbits about his stunning career. 

The SIGGRAPH Past

Each year at SIGGRAPH’s big conference, there is a special section of the conference that focuses on Emerging Technologies. Each year, this experience is one of the conference's signature attractions and, for many attendees, its most memorable. It’s far different from the technical paper sessions, where one would learn about research through presentations. Emerging Technologies is where you physically interact with working prototypes that often represent the first public demonstration of a new idea. While other offerings might showcase how things might come in the form of future commercial products and consumer electronics - even medicine! - Smoot’s ideas have been presented and showcased new ideas in theatrical entertainment. 

One of those was the Interactive Ping Pong Ball Zoetrope. Smoot commented that Walt Disney himself would have loved this one, as it takes the idea of the classic animation tool - a zoetrope - and brings it to life in a whole new way. The new device made its debut at SIGGRAPH back in 2010, and featured eight ping-pong balls mounted on a rapidly spinning turntable. 

Each ball is painted with a slightly different facial expression and mouth position, and a rotary encoder tracks the exact angular position of the spinning turntable, with tightly focused high-power LED light that illuminated only one ball at precisely the right instant.

A microphone whose audio level determined which mouth shape appeared was ready for attendees to use, and as someone spoke into the microphone, the system selected the appropriate mouth position every revolution, making the face appear to talk in real time. Instead of replaying a fixed animation loop, the physical object responded live to the speaker's voice.

That same year, Smoot also showcased the Electromagnetic Eye. This new mechanism, designed for use on Audio-Animatronics figures took the animation to a new level. Instead of rotating an eyeball on bearings, he created an inner eyeball suspended inside a transparent outer shell filled with a clear, index-matched liquid. The inner sphere was neutrally buoyant, meaning it essentially floated with almost no friction. Electromagnets surrounding the eye rotated the inner sphere magnetically, allowing it to snap into position with remarkable speed.

In 2011, Emerging Technologies played host to another Smoot invention, the Volumetric Display. The new system was an evolution of a 3D display - though no glasses were needed. Most "3D displays" show different images to each eye to create stereoscopic depth. The image still exists on a flat screen.

Smoot's system instead created a true volumetric image. Light was emitted from different depths within a physical volume, so your eyes naturally focused on different distances as you looked around the object.

The image appeared to float roughly 13 inches in front of the machine, wowing those who saw it. Smoot was excited about this tech, even after 15 years. While much of the SIGGRAPH crowd wasn’t as all in on his Disney resume compared to the rockstar status if this same presentation was given at a D23 event, he got excited and said “I don’t want to make any forward looking statements, but who knows. Maybe this will show up in the parks soon.”

The Wars

While Smoot went through a number of his works for Disney, each of which would be met with a show-stopping amount of applause if this were a D23 event, the ones that did garner a reaction were typically those with a Star Wars connection. 

Smoot spoke fondly of the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser that was formerly at Walt Disney World, and showcased the Lightsaber Training experience that he helped bring to the unique experience. He also showcased the extendable and retractable lightsaber that garnered much attention when it first arrived - again, only seen during the short run of the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser at Walt Disney World. 

Sadly, the Star Wars interactive overnight experience closed in 2023, only 19 months after it opened the previous March.

Oddly, but not surprising given the crowd at SIGGRAPH, the biggest response from the crowd came when Smoot mentioned his work on the Disney Infinity games. He explained that the system, which unlocked more features when you would put toys on an interactive base as part of the game, had the capabilities for transferring a small amount of electricity, giving him the opportunity to devise a way to get the lightsabers on the Star Wars-themed figures to actually light up. 

He also explained how we get to see a haze around Mace Windu’s lightsaber at the Star Wars: Launch Bay at Disneyland — something that he openly said was much harder to do in real life than it is via visual effects on the silver screen.

The Floors

Smoot spent quite a bit of time on the ground floor at Disney Research, so to speak. He developed many of the technologies that would bring interactivities to new heights - or lows, in this case, - on the very floors that many guests walk on. 

Aboard the Disney Cruise Line, youngsters (and adults who visit during open house hours) can spend some time in the Oceaneer’s Club. Those who have been know that dead center in the room is a giant interactive floorspace that becomes a home for interactive games and activities throughout each voyage. A technology that came to life thanks to Smoot. 

Keeping with the theme, he then went on to explain a similar tech that was used with the interactive koi ponds at the Crystal Lotus Restaurant at the Disneyland Hotel at Hong Kong Disneyland. 

Before this though, it was at EPCOT’s Spaceship - more specifically the exit - we can see one of the earliest trials with the tech - Power City, part of Project Tomorrow. The interactive experience sees guests uses hockey stick-esque devices to push virtual pucks around the floor.

Of course, his work with floors has been brought to headlines around the world when he invented the Holotile floor - a treadmill like system that can move items (and people!) directionally across a special floorspace. Much has already been written about the Holotile floor system, but the...groundwork...for Smoot's work with flooring was laid quite some time ago.

The Walls

When deciding which of his patents to highlight as part of his National Inventors Hall of Fame induction, Smoot selected “Where’s the Fire?,” an interactive attraction that was located at EPCOT’s Inventions. This interactive experience promoted fire prevention through engaging challenges, where guests would shine what Smoot described as an X-Ray flashlight that could see through the walls of a house and, through the magic of his technology, exposed hidden fire dangers and learned how to prevent them from happening.

Smoot explained that he chose this particular patent because he had heard word that this experience actually resonated with guests, who would put the practices learned in the attraction into use in their own home. Perhaps even preventing real disasters. 

The Halls

Smoot was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2024 - only the second individual from The Walt Disney Company to be inducted. The first being Walt Disney himself, who was honored posthumously in 2000 for the multi-plane camera. Throughout his career, he has worked as a theatrical technology creator, inventor, electrical engineer, scientist, and researcher, resulting in more than 100 patents—an incredibly rare feat. Of that total, 74 of his patents were created during his 25 years at The Walt Disney Company. It was a moving moment for Smoot, who shared how honored he felt when it happened before sharing a clip of his induction during his presentation. 

We've previously written about Smoot's induction into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame back when it happened in 2024.

The Wisdom

A big part of the presentation was a large number of little tidbits of advice peppered throughout his presentation. Nuggets of wisdom that he passed on to all those in attendance. 

While sharing stories from his youth, where he called himself a “tinkerer and experimenter,” he emphasized that this is typically a clue at a young age that signs of interest in a career are starting to bloom. 

He even shared a story about how he built a homemade unicycle at a young age, prompting his parents to buy him a real one. In fact, a unicycle can be found in his office at Disney, and is even featured in a display honoring Smoot during Celebrate Soulfully festivities at Disney California Adventure. Explaining that this kind of tinkering and inventing and building has been a passion for his whole life, he shared “If you follow what you love and make it a job, you will enjoy the journey throughout your whole life.”

He also reminded everyone in attendance that even mundane jobs can be done creatively. Perhaps my favorite piece of wisdom came from his experience at both Bell Systems and at the Walt Disney Company. As Smoot said, “working with big companies - they generally like to save money to make money,” explaining that whatever your idea is, it has to be better than what exists now but also has to be affordable.

On that same note, using tech he helped develop for the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage at Disneyland, he added that whatever your idea is - you need to love it yourself and make sure you make everyone else love it. “Your ideas are always important to you,” he said. “You just have to make sure that they become important to others.”

The Big Surprise

Perhaps the biggest shock in the SIGGRAPH crowd and a shock that would come for any other conference Smoot might give this speech at, is one of his inventions from earlier in his career. 

Sure, we’ve heard of many inventions and creations for the Walt Disney Company but prior to his arrival at the Mouse House, he already had a storied career at Bell Systems in their research department, Bellcore. While there, he developed a technology that could be used say, during a sports telecast, where you the viewer would be able to control the camera for your own screen to focus on whatever you wanted to focus on. While that tech may not have become a household commodity decades later, there was an early version of something that has that Smoot was behind. 

During his presentation, Smoot showcased archival footage and a news broadcast from WWOR TV Channel 9 in New York that featured what he referred to as a Video On Demand System. It was a system that used telephone and communications lines to watch a selection of films via those same lines on home screens without interrupting phone calls. 

The footage showed off his system, which tapped into and started playing the footage off cassettes housed within a central device - and most importantly, more than one person could use it at a time. Think of it as an early streaming device. 

Audible gasps filled the room as everyone put the pieces together realizing how big of an impact Smoot has had on everyone’s every day life. 

“I’m very proud to be part of something that we now see as ordinary technology,” Smoot said.