1. Robot Improv : Using Drama to Create Believable Agents
Allison Bruce, Jonathan Knight, Samuel Listopad, Brian Magerko,
Illah Nourbakhsh
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon

2. Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
Motivation
Physical robots as believable agents
Instead of modeling human behavior, model the behavior of actors
Mechanism is known
Designed for believability
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon

3. Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
Definitions
Hero
Villain
Outer obstacles
Inner obstacles
Given circumstances
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon

4. Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
The Play
Two robots in acting class
Improvisation: an introductory exercise
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon

5. Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
Implementation
Nomad Scouts
Planner and motion control
code written in Java
900 Mhz Radio Modems
Text-to-speech synthesis
software
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon

6. Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
Play Architecture
Room
Props
Actors
Inner obstacles
Goals
Behaviors
Actions
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon

7. Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
Execution Loop
Listen and Update
Success function
Inner obstacle perturbation and decay
Choose Action
2-level hierarchical planner
Act
Sonar-based obstacle avoidance
Communicate
Position, Action, Dialog
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon

8. Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
Experiments
First public performance April ’99 at CMU
Performed at AAAI ’99 robotics exhibition times using 6 actor personalities
Performed 18 more times at CMU for video documentation
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon

9. Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
Performances
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon

10. Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
Results
Embodiment matters
Improvisation relies on physical factors
Possible improvements
More sophisticated dialog selection
Transitions between behaviors
Public response
Future work
Longer, more complex plays
Acting with humans
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon