Computational Choreography
Expressive Robot Movement
Affective Motion Planning
Karel Čapek
“R.U.R” Karel Čapek
Robots and Movement
Expressive Robot Movement
Laban Movement Analysis 1. Laban Movement Analysis
Laban Effort Space (Direct, Indirect) Weight (Strong, Light) Time (Sudden, Sustained) Flow (Bound, Free)
Harris, J., & Sharlin, E. (2011). SAM (Valance and Arousal) “To Increase Valence or Arousal: use space more indirectly, or perform the motion more quickly.To Decrease Valence or Arousal: use space more directly, or perform the motion in a more sustained fashion.”
2. Animation
Squash and stretch Anticipation Staging Straight ahead action and pose to pose Follow through and overlapping action Slow in and slow out Arcs Secondary action Timing Exaggeration Solid drawing Appeal
2. Animation Arcs Slow in and Slow Out
Acceleration Easing
3. Robot Body Language Erden, Mustafa Suphi. "Emotional Postures for the Humanoid-Robot Nao."International Journal of Social Robotics 5.4 (2013):
What to Build? Speed Amplitude: maximum distance between two points in the trajectory Acceleration: number accelerations Deceleration: number of decelerations Frequency: number of times motion repeats itself in one time frame Direction: diagonal, horizontal, vertical, or combination Fluidity: smooth, jerky, or combined Vertical position: top, center, bottom Horizontal position: left, center, right Shape: straight, angular, curvy, or combined Path self-intersection: number of self-intersections (where the trajectory crosses itself) Acute directional changes: number of changes where the angle of two path segments is smaller than 90 degrees. Obtuse directional changes: number of changes where the angle of two path segments is greater than or equal to 90 degrees.
Expressive Robot Movement Laban Energy Actions Space (Divergent Waypoints) Acceleration Trajectories (Trajectory Easing) Forward / Backward “Leaning”
Expressive Robot Movement
DEMO (ROS)
DEMO (Visual)
Do changing motion planning features have an effect of the perceived emotion?
Protocol (System computes motion plans for all conditions.) Intake, Informed Consent, etc Subject is encouraged to chatter throughout the experiment Subject watches 30 seconds of industrial robot video and 30 seconds of nature video System presents, in a random order, a motion plan (25-35s). Subject uses SAM (valance, arousal) to answer, “how you think the robot is feeling while making the motion, not your own feelings.” Subject provides an estimate for how many seconds they thought the movement took. Subject writes down 2-3 keywords about the movements Video Semi-structured Interview
Protocol LinearEasing DirectControl Indrect
Protocol LinearEasing DirectControl Indrect x 3 (f, b, n)
n = 1
n = 0
What’s Next? Complete virtual robot study by Dec 10 Submit Addendum to IRB to permit offsite study in NYC w/ Baxter January - IAP Focus Refine waypoint arc’ing, packaging code & more evaluation Robot Science and Systems (Jan 30)