Choreographic and Somatic Approaches for the Development of Expressive Robotic Systems

As robotic systems are moved out of factory work cells into human-facing environments questions of choreography become central to their design, placement, and application. With a human viewer or counterpart present, a system will automatically be interpreted within context, style of movement, and form factor by human beings as animate elements of their environment. The interpretation by this human counterpart is critical to the success of the system's integration: knobs on the system need to make sense to a human counterpart; an artificial agent should have a way of notifying a human counterpart of a change in system state, possibly through motion profiles; and the motion of a human counterpart may have important contextual clues for task completion. Thus, professional choreographers, dance practitioners, and movement analysts are critical to research in robotics. They have design methods for movement that align with human audience perception, can identify simplified features of movement for human-robot interaction goals, and have detailed knowledge of the capacity of human movement. This article provides approaches employed by one research lab, specific impacts on technical and artistic projects within, and principles that may guide future such work. The background section reports on choreography, somatic perspectives, improvisation, the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System, and robotics. From this context methods including embodied exercises, writing prompts, and community building activities have been developed to facilitate interdisciplinary research. The results of this work is presented as an overview of a smattering of projects in areas like high-level motion planning, software development for rapid prototyping of movement, artistic output, and user studies that help understand how people interpret movement. Finally, guiding principles for other groups to adopt are posited.Comment: Under review at MDPI Arts Special Issue "The Machine as Artist (for the 21st Century)" http://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts/special_issues/Machine_Artis

Near range path navigation using LGMD visual neural networks

In this paper, we proposed a method for near range path navigation for a mobile robot by using a pair of biologically inspired visual neural network – lobula giant movement detector (LGMD). In the proposed binocular style visual system, each LGMD processes images covering a part of the wide field of view and extracts relevant visual cues as its output. The outputs from the two LGMDs are compared and translated into executable motor commands to control the wheels of the robot in real time. Stronger signal from the LGMD in one side pushes the robot away from this side step by step; therefore, the robot can navigate in a visual environment naturally with the proposed vision system. Our experiments showed that this bio-inspired system worked well in different scenarios

Development of an intelligent object for grasp and manipulation research

Kõiva R, Haschke R, Ritter H. Development of an intelligent object for grasp and manipulation research. Presented at the ICAR 2011, Tallinn, Estonia.In this paper we introduce a novel device, called iObject, which is equipped with tactile and motion tracking sensors that allow for the evaluation of human and robot grasping and manipulation actions. Contact location and contact force, object acceleration in space (6D) and orientation relative to the earth (3D magnetometer) are measured and transmitted wirelessly over a Bluetooth connection. By allowing human-human, human-robot and robot-robot comparisons to be made, iObject is a versatile tool for studying manual interaction. To demonstrate the efficiency and flexibility of iObject for the study of bimanual interactions, we report on a physiological experiment and evaluate the main parameters of the considered dual-handed manipulation task

Synesthetic art through 3-D projection: The requirements of a computer-based supermedium

A computer-based form of multimedia art is proposed that uses the computer to fuse aspects of painting, sculpture, dance, music, film, and other media into a one-to-one synthesia of image and sound for spatially synchronous 3-D projection. Called synesthetic art, this conversion of many varied media into an aesthetically unitary experience determines the character and requirements of the system and its software. During the start-up phase, computer stereographic systems are unsuitable for software development. Eventually, a new type of illusory-projective supermedium will be required to achieve the needed combination of large-format projection and convincing real life presence, and to handle the vast amount of 3-D visual and acoustic information required. The influence of the concept on the author's research and creative work is illustrated through two examples

Deployable Payloads with Starbug

We explore the range of wide field multi-object instrument concepts taking advantage of the unique capabilities of the Starbug focal plane positioning concept. Advances to familiar instrument concepts, such as fiber positioners and deployable fiber-fed IFUs, are discussed along with image relays and deployable active sensors. We conceive deployable payloads as components of systems more traditionally regarded as part of telescope systems rather than instruments - such as adaptive optics and ADCs. Also presented are some of the opportunities offered by the truly unique capabilities of Starbug, such as microtracking to apply intra-field distortion correction during the course of an observation.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Proc. SPIE 6273 "Opto-Mechanical Technologies for Astronomy