HERB’s Sure Thing: a rapid drama system for rehearsing and performing live robot theater
Abstract
In Spring 2014, the Personal Robotics Lab at CMU collaborated with the School of Drama to develop, produce and stage a live theatrical performance at the Purnell Center for the Arts in Pittsburgh. This paper describes some of our unique experiences collaborating with drama faculty, the director and the actor. We highlight the challenges arising from theatrical performance and specifically describe some of the technical tools we developed: a bidirectional Blender interface for robot animation, an interactive system for manipulating speech prosody, and a conductor’s console for online improvisation and control during rehearsal and performance. It also explores some of the remaining challenges to our goal of developing algorithms and open-source tools that can enable any roboticist in the world to create their own dramatic performance.
BibTeX
@workshop{Zeglin-2014-7924,author = {Garth Zeglin and Aaron Walsman and Laura Herlant and Zhaodong Zheng and Yuyang Guo and Michael Koval and Kevin Lenzo and Hui Jun Tay and Prasanna Velagapudi and Katie Correll and Siddhartha Srinivasa},
title = {HERB’s Sure Thing: a rapid drama system for rehearsing and performing live robot theater},
booktitle = {Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts},
year = {2014},
month = {September},
pages = {129 - 136},
}