Anthrobot

   

A human robot dance performance

 
 
   

2023

with Lasse Scherffig, Cihan Subasi and the Diphtong Collective

The ANTHROBOT project delves into the intricate dynamics of human-machine relationships, exploring new perspectives through a unique trio: a child, a senior, and a 6-axis industrial robot. At its heart lies the profound question of how intergenerational dialogue can be mediated through encounters with the ‘otherness’1 of an industrial robot arm.

Students programming the UR3e robot arm. They were involved in all steps: creative ideation, development of the performance, rehearsals, robot programming and stage assembly.

Collaboration and Development Phases

The project was brought to life in close collaboration with the Diphtong Collective, contributing their expertise in performance and artistic direction.

The culmination of this work was a series of performances in early December 2023 at Kunsthafen Rhenania, offering the public a chance to experience the unique human-robot dialogue firsthand. The project was developed as a seminar at KISD Köln International School of Design.

At the core of ANTHROBOT’s interactive capabilities is a custom UR3e MQTT Controller (GitHub Repository). This script enables the precise and dynamic control of the Universal Robots UR3e industrial robot arm vie the MQTT protocol.

The custom MQTT control interface used to choreograph the UR3e robot arm drawing by Tyanka Demyanka Adrian

Within the seminar, students focused on principles of human-computer interaction and interaction design. They developed choreographed programs for the robot that could be loaded and played remotely. To enrich the performance, they also designed soundscapes by integrating triggers into the MQTT communication scheme, which controlled the audio via OSC. A portion of the performance utilized a ‘freedrive’ mode, enabling an actor to move the robot’s arm directly for more fluid interaction. To manage these elements live, the students created a control dashboard for sending MQTT commands to the robot during the performance.

Performance

Impressions from the performance photography by Alessandro de Matteis®.

Students

  • Tyanka Demyanka Adrian
  • Alina Bertacca
  • Lilith Greta Meyer
  • Johannes Hermut Förster
  • Diana Guadalupe Espino Flores
  • Carlos Andres Luis Strohm
  • Pedro dos Santos Palavra
  • Ema Imbrasaite
  • Eduarda Marisa Lima Cerqueira
  • Phillip Gatzke

  1. Matthias Laschke et al., Otherware Needs Otherness: Understanding and Designing Artificial Counterparts, in Proceedings of the 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Shaping Experiences, Shaping Society (New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1145/3419249.3420079. ↩