{"203421":{"#nid":"203421","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Engineering Style of Dance for Robots and People","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA dancing robot is nothing new. A quick search on YouTube will yield videos of robots dancing to Michael Jackson\u2019s Thriller, Gangnam Style, the Macarena and more.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut at the Georgia Institute of Technology, researchers are taking robots and dance to a higher level.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EInstead of programming a robot to copy an existing dance such as those in the online videos, Amy LaViers, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical and computer engineering, is defining the various styles of human movement and creating algorithms to reproduce them on a humanoid robot.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhat\u2019s more, LaViers has produced a robotic dance performance based on her research, called \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_6LqL3S4lDk\u0026amp;feature=youtu.be\u0022\u003E\u201cAutomaton\u003C\/a\u003E,\u201d in which a Nao robot and professional dancers explore the notion of \u201cautomatic style.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe show debuts at 8 p.m. on April 6 in the lower atrium of the G. Wayne Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons. A second showing will be held at 5 p.m. on April 13, also in Clough Commons\u2019 lower atrium, as part of the 2013 TechArts Festival.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe are working with such a highly articulated robot that can do so many cool things, yet there are many ways he is limited too,\u201d \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.prism.gatech.edu\/~alaviers3\/\u0022\u003ELaViers\u003C\/a\u003E said. \u201cI do play with that idea of: What can the robot do, and what can the people do? Where are the differences and where are the similarities?\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELaViers\u0027 work exemplifies the intersection of engineering and dance, and could be applied to make robots more useful in everyday life, said \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/users.ece.gatech.edu\/~magnus\/\u0022\u003EMagnus Egerstedt\u003C\/a\u003E, professor of electrical and computer engineering and LaViers\u0027 faculty advisor.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen robots are transitioning out of the manufacturing floor and into homes, becoming co-workers instead of tools, they need to understand to a certain degree what it means to be human,\u201d Egerstedt said. \u201cThey need to move in a style that makes sense to people, so that\u2019s why we started thinking about how you quantify style.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EA dancer for most of her life, LaViers thought to combine dance with engineering during her undergraduate senior project at Princeton University. She saw a natural overlap between choreography, an arrangement of steps, and robotic algorithms, an engineering tool that plans robotic movement.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERobotic movements tend to be stiff and unnatural, but LaViers believes robots should have a range of quality of movement. To achieve this, she is developing quantitative tools that explain what differentiates movements using dance theorist Rudolf Laban\u2019s notion of quality.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELaViers also examines the basic poses and movements that define a style to quantify differences between genres of movement. What is the difference, for instance, between doing a disco dance and performing ballet? Using a computer program she developed for her thesis, she encodes that information so it can be reproduced on robots. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cUnderstanding how humans move is key to developing better techniques and applications to make robots move in a way that humans can relate to. \u2018Style\u2019 is part of this \u2013 particularly in the arts,\u201d LaViers said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELaViers\u2019 research fits into the overall objective of Egerstedt\u2019s lab, the \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/gritslab.gatech.edu\/home\/\u0022\u003EGeorgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems (GRITS) \u003C\/a\u003Elab.\u0026nbsp; The lab aims to produce robotic algorithms that endow robots of all kinds with desirable behavior.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHaving algorithms that mimic human movement in a high-level way could advance the use of robots in real-world settings.\u0026nbsp; For example, it may enable caregiving robots to have more comforting movement that is less intimidating to patients. Style-based measurements may also provide better feedback to patients recovering from physical disabilities or injuries.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the \u201cAutomaton\u201d piece, LaViers presents choreography generated from the framework in her thesis that is performed by human dancers and automated on the humanoid robot. After the performance, audience members will have a chance to give feedback on their impressions of the movement.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI hope the audience thinks of movement and programmed objects a little bit differently after seeing the show,\u201d LaViers said. \u201cI also hope it brings up ideas of technology in our lives today and in the future, when robots may be more commonplace.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EInstead of programming a robot to copy an existing dance such as those in the online videos, Amy LaViers, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical and computer engineering, is defining the various styles of human movement and creating algorithms to reproduce them on a humanoid robot.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Amy LaViers, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical and computer engineering, is defining the various styles of human movement and creating algorithms to reproduce them on a humanoid robot."}],"uid":"27462","created_gmt":"2013-04-01 13:54:42","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:13:59","author":"Liz Klipp","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2013-04-01T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2013-04-01T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"203441":{"id":"203441","type":"image","title":"Amy LaViers","body":null,"created":"1449179952","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:59:12","changed":"1475894859","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:47:39","alt":"Amy LaViers","file":{"fid":"196644","name":"automaton3.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/automaton3_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/automaton3_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1418092,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/automaton3_0.jpg?itok=0sOLoQ4U"}},"203451":{"id":"203451","type":"image","title":"Automaton - 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flickr gallery"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.arts.gatech.edu\/connect\/news\/techarts-festival-2013-schedule","title":"TechArts Festival 2013"},{"url":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/events\/437936852954665\/","title":"Automaton Facebook page"},{"url":"http:\/\/clough.gatech.edu\/","title":"Clough Commons"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.coe.gatech.edu\/","title":"College of Engineering"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?feature=youtu.be\u0026v=_6LqL3S4lDk","title":"Automaton - Video"}],"groups":[{"id":"1214","name":"News Room"}],"categories":[{"id":"145","name":"Engineering"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"},{"id":"152","name":"Robotics"}],"keywords":[{"id":"63011","name":"Amy LaViers"},{"id":"594","name":"college of engineering"},{"id":"4251","name":"dance"},{"id":"59441","name":"GRITS Lab"},{"id":"11528","name":"Magnus Egerstedt"},{"id":"63021","name":"Nao"},{"id":"667","name":"robotics"},{"id":"166855","name":"School of Electrical and Computer Engineering"},{"id":"167979","name":"Style"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39521","name":"Robotics"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELaura Diamond\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:laura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Elaura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-894-6016\u003Cbr \/\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-660-2926\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["klipp@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}