A dancing robot for rhythmic social interaction - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University

A dancing robot for rhythmic social interaction

Marek Piotr Michalowski, S. Sabanovic, and H. Kozima
Conference Paper, Proceedings of ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '07), pp. 89 - 96, March, 2007

Abstract

This paper describes a robotic system that uses dance as a form of social interaction to explore the properties and importance of rhythmic movement in general social interaction. The system consists of a small creature-like robot whose movement is controlled by a rhythm-based software system. Environmental rhythms can be extracted from auditory or visual sensory stimuli, and the robot synchronizes its movement to a dominant rhythm. The system was demonstrated, and an exploratory study conducted, with children interacting with the robot in a generalized dance task. Through a behavioral analysis of videotaped interactions, we found that the robot? synchronization with the background music had an effect on children? interactive involvement with the robot. Furthermore, we observed a number of expected and unexpected styles and modalities of interactive exploration and play that inform our discussion on the next steps in the design of a socially rhythmic robotic system.

BibTeX

@conference{Michalowski-2007-9671,
author = {Marek Piotr Michalowski and S. Sabanovic and H. Kozima},
title = {A dancing robot for rhythmic social interaction},
booktitle = {Proceedings of ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '07)},
year = {2007},
month = {March},
pages = {89 - 96},
publisher = {ACM},
}