A Machine
Babyface
Making Meaning With Machines
Time to Compile

Robots and Dance: A Promising Young Alchemy

By A. LaViers
Counts of Mechanical, External Configurations Compared to Computational, Internal Configurations in Natural and Artificial Systems
Center-of-Mass Control for Expressive and Effective Movement in Bipedal Robots
Programmed Improvisation Inspired From Autonomous Humanoids
Breathing With Robots: Notating Performer Strategy, Alongside Choreographer Intent and Audience Observation, In Breath-driven Robotic Dance Performance
An Open Data Infrastructure for Bodily Expressed Emotion Understanding
Modeling the Interactions of Context and Style on Affect in Motion Perception: Stylized Gaits Across Multiple Environmental Contexts
Character Recognition on a Varied Robotic Platforms via a Laban Movement Analysis in Expert and Lay Groups
First Encounters with Robots Through Embodied Observation, Imagined Narrative, and Choreography
Controls and Art
Automatic Sequencing of Ballet Poses: A Formal Approach to Phrase Generation
Toward an Expressive Bipedal Robot: Variable Gait Synthesis and Validation in a Planar Model

Abstractions for Design-by-Humans of Heterogeneous Autonomous Behaviors

Written by A. LaViers, A. Bashiri, Y. Sheng, J. Heddy, and L. Bai
Style-based Robotic Motion in Contemporary Dance Performance
Babyface: Performance and Installation Art Exploring the Feminine Ideal in Gendered Machines

Automation Supporting Prolonged Independent Residence for the Elderly (ASPIRE)

National Science Foundation Award #1528036
Time to Compile: A Performance Installation as Human-Robot Interaction Study Examining Self-Evaluation and Perceived Control Through the Lenses of Movement and Technology Literacy and Valence
Imitation of Human Motion by Low Degree-of-Freedom Simulated Robots and Human Preference for Mappings Driven by Spinal, Arm, and Leg Activity
Ideal Mechanization: Exploring the Machine Metaphor Through Theory and Performance
Laban-Inspired Task-Constrained Expressive, Variable Motion Generation on Aerial Robots
Feasible Stylized Motion: Robotic Manipulator Imitation of a Human Demonstration with Collision Avoidance and Style in Increasingly Cluttered Environments
An Embodied, Platform-invariant Architecture for Connecting High-level Spatial Commands to Platform Articulation
Choreographic and Somatic Approaches for the Development of Expressive Robotic Systems

Can a Robot Do a Trust Fall? Absurdity as a Component of Human Intelligence and Embodiment

By A. LaViers and I. Vidrin
Toward Human-like Teleoperated Robot Motion: Performance and Perception of a Choreography-inspired Method in Static and Dynamic Tasks for Rapid Pose Selection of Articulated Robots
Motion-activated Wearable Robot for Live Dance Performance Investigating the Feminine Cyborg Metaphor

CURTAIN and Time to Compile: A Demonstration of an Experimental Testbed for Human-robot Interaction

Written by C. Cuan, I. Pakrasi, E. Berl, and A. LaViers
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The People Movers x The RAD Lab

3/25/19

The RAD Lab has invited Kate Ladenheim to be an artist-in-residence for 2019 and 2020.  

Kate will work collaboratively with the lab to develop new artistic work and inform the research, teaching, and outreach activities in the lab with her participation.  In this collaboration we are interested in exploring how the gendered normalisms that dominate screens and stages intersect with the diminutive status of being “cute” in the context of robotics.  Kate has proposed to study the order, hierarchy, and organized prettiness that features in the stories and personas created for women in popular culture, and subvert these learned aesthetics with her work.  For example, Instagram-friendly clearly laid out designs and advertisements often feature smiling, retouched women at the forefront. Often, we say that such women are “cute”. This is a repeated pattern, or motif, in society; what is its purpose and what are its effects?  

We often say that toy-like robots are “cute” while industrial robots are “scary”.  Do technologies that are “cute” signal that they are non-threatening? Are humans that are “cute” non-threatening?  How does that change what we think about these machines? Is “cute” a descriptor that can be a kind of reward to be sought out, or is it a label that minimizes and modifies the behavior of the such labeled?  Can we quantify this repeated pattern of assignment? Where does this repetition break down and what are the emotional costs of recalibration after failure?  These questions, and surely more, will be traversed during this residency through artistic and technological simultaneity where Kate’s work will question the lab’s tools and vice versa.

Read the whole blog post here