1.1. Course Description¶

16-375/54-375: Robotics for Creative Practice

MW 1:30PM-3:20PM

Hunt Library A5 (Fab Lab)

Instructor: Dr. Garth Zeglin (garthz)

https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/16-375

IDeATe Studio Course for the Intelligent Environments and Physical Computing programs

This collaborative course brings art and engineering together to explore interdisciplinary practice at the intersection of drama, music, and robotics. This exploration is the key aim of IDeATe: we are developing practitioners who can utilize their expert domain knowledge effectively in collaboration with other disciplines. This involves developing both rigorous individual expertise as well as broad skills in negotiating other domain vocabularies.

The students in the course form a collaborative working group developing performance machines culminating in a theatrical performance. These machines use embodied behavior as a creative medium for storytelling and performance. Students are expected to learn new skills but also teach their own expertise. The technical portion of the course includes a number of techniques: pneumatic design, kinematics, feedback control, real-time programming, and machine choreography.

This course project revolves around the following question: what does it mean to be surprisingly animate? This phrase originally comes from a quip between roboticists [1] but suggests a number of subsidiary questions:

1. What do we mean by animate?
2. Can the quality of surprise endure?
3. How do we create behavior without computation?
4. How does embodiment change our perceptions of computation?
5. Can a making machine be as expressive as its artifacts?

1.2. Learning Objectives¶

Upon completion of this course the students will be able to:

1. construct pneumatically-actuated articulated structures using a kit of mechanical and structural components
2. write a story treatment and design specialized machine characters to support the narrative
3. apply basic closed-loop control techniques to implement, calibrate, and tune joint-level position control
4. program a combined Max, Python, and microcontroller system to produce custom parameterized movement primitives
5. program using basic state machines, feedback control, planning, and learning algorithms to create the illusion of life and agency
6. collaborate with teams of artists, designers, engineers, and computer scientists to create performance technology
7. use machine behavior as an artistic medium

It also incorporates the general goals of IDeATe to develop hybrid students with integrated knowledge in technology and arts. This stresses the following general skills:

1. algorithmic thinking
2. analytic thinking
3. end-to-end concept execution
4. communication through writing, drawing, and speaking
5. attention to detail
6. performance preparation
7. professional preparation

1.3. Grading Rubric¶

Each assignment serves both learning and evaluative goals. Fulfilling the assignment is an essential step in the learning process, and the result also demonstrates learning success. Please take careful note of the requirements for each assignment: they represent a type of contract between student and instructor.

Everybody is assumed to start with an A in the course. If you do the work you will keep it, but failing to fulfill the expectations will cause you to drift downward.

The total grade in the course will be weighted approximately 70% for projects, 20% for exercises, and 10% for classroom participation and discussion.