Rhythmic Synchronization ofDancing Robots

Nick WongDr. Rafael Fierro

1"This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS/REU/0755462.“"Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation."

The goal

Generate spontaneous and socially engaging robotic dancing by accurately synchronizing the motion of a two-wheeled robot(s) to external audio and visual rhythms

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Dancing robots?

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Choreographed

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Non-choreographed

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So you think you can dance?

1. Sense of rhythm• Auditory, visual, proprioceptive• Synchronization is key

2. Mobility• Robot’s mechanics and kinematics

3. Creativity / Diversity in behavior• Robots dancing but not “robotic dancing”

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Synchronization is key

• Detection and adjustment of a system’s internal rhythm to an external rhythm in frequency (ν) and phase (θ)

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The Robot

Rotary encoders

Webcam

Microphone

Central-processor

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Differential-drive

Controls flowchart

Rotary encoders

Webcam

Microphone

Central-processor:

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Differential-drive

Rhythm detection Comparator

νref, θref

νmeas,θmeas

Motion generator

Dance

Questions?http://delmoswade.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/boombox-project-1.jpghttp://www.evolution.com/products/ersp/sdk.htmlhttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/KeeponTophatNextfest2007.jpghttp://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/dance-dance-revolution-20-robots-think-they-can-dance/J.-J. Aucouturier, "Cheek to chip: Dancing robots and AI's future," IEEE Intelligent Systems, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 74-

84, 2008.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28300535/C. Crick, M. Munz, and B. Scassellati. Synchronization in Social Tasks: Robotic Drumming. Proceedings of the

15th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2006.A. Schollig, F. Augugliaro, and R. D'Andrea. Synchronizing the motion of a quadrocopter to music. In

Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2010. to appear.

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