Syllabus: Robotics for Creative Practice

16-375/54-375 IDeATe: Robotics for Creative Practice
TR 3:00-4:20PM
Hunt Library A5 (IDeATe Fab Lab)
https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/16-375
Instructor: Dr. Garth Zeglin (garthz)
IDeATe Collaborative Course, offered by Drama and The Robotics Institute
IDeATe Programs: Intelligent Environments, Physical Computing

The course is offered the same under either 16-375 or 54-375, although with slightly varying descriptions as noted in italics:

16-375 IDeATe: Robotics for Creative Practice

Robots come in all shapes and sizes: it is the integration of software and hardware that can make any machine surprisingly animate. This project-oriented course brings art and engineering together to build performance systems using embodied behavior as a creative medium. Students learn skills for designing, constructing and programming automated systems for storytelling and human interaction, then explore the results through exhibition and performance. Technical topics include closed-loop motion control, expressive physical and computational behavior, machine choreography, and performance conceptualization. Discussion topics include both contemporary kinetic sculpture and robotics research. This interdisciplinary course is part of IDeATe Physical Computing but is open to any student.

54-375 IDeATe: Robotics for Creative Practice

Robots come in all shapes and sizes: it is the integration of software and hardware that can make any machine surprisingly animate. This project-oriented course brings art and engineering together to build performance systems using embodied behavior as a creative medium. Students learn skills for designing, constructing and programming automated systems for storytelling and human interaction, then explore the results through exhibition and performance. Technical topics include programmed motion control, pneumatic machine design, closed-loop feedback systems, machine choreography, and human-robot interaction. Discussion topics include contemporary kinetic sculpture and animatronics. This interdisciplinary course is part of IDeATe Physical Computing but is open to any student.

Prerequisites and Enrollment

This course has no formal prerequisites, but students are expected to have junior-level technical skills within their own discipline. If you have any questions concerning prerequisites please contact the instructor. Total enrollment is limited to 20 students, drawn from all departments.

Detailed Description

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 effectively utilize their expert domain knowledge in collaboration with other disciplines. This involves developing both rigorous individual expertise as well as skill with negotiating the vocabularies of other domains. Students will be expected to learn skills from outside their home discipline and teach their own expertise, but more importantly, to develop their abilities to collaborate in diverse groups.

The students in the course work in assigned groups to develop performance machines, culminating in a public show. These machines use embodied behavior as a creative medium for storytelling and performance. The technical portion of the course includes a number of techniques: pneumatic design, kinematics, feedback control, real-time programming, and machine choreography.

The 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. How do we create behavior without computation?
  3. How does embodiment change our perceptions of computation?

Each year the course develops a different theme. This year we will focus on software and hardware techniques for creating expressive dynamic behavior. The emphasis is on creating machines with physical dynamics which reveals the interaction of a machine and environment. This is then manipulated as a narrative medium to reveal hidden goals and understanding. The interaction of a machine and environment evokes questions of the blurry boundaries between the synthetic and the natural, the self and the other, the animate and the inanimate. There are a number of possible approaches: balancing and juggling machines, Rube Goldberg devices, the manipulation of fabric, and more.

[1]The full phrase, “a robot is a surprisingly animate machine!”, is attributed to David Grossman in M. Brady, “Editorial: Preface to the millennium special issue”, Int. J. Robotics Research 18, No. 11, 1051-1055 (November, 1999)

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. formulate a narrative goal as an interaction of a machine and material or objects
  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 and analytic thinking
  2. end-to-end execution of project concepts
  3. communication through writing, drawing, and speaking
  4. professional preparation

Grading Rubric

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 75% for projects, 15% for exercises, and 10% for classroom participation and discussion.

Please note also that much of the feedback on your work will come in the form of critique and commentary rather than numerical scores. Please attend to this; the commentary will be a much more substantive guide to your personal learning process than the scoring.

Each project will also include a peer evaluation component. The purpose of this element is to identify the specific contributions of each group member to the project outcome. Individual scores for a project may vary from the group score based on peer reports and instructor observations.

Course Structure

The overall structure of the semester is organized around developing the final performance. It begins with foundational exercises to develop technical skills, followed by a project development schedule with several performance milestones.

Week Topics and Project Activities
1 Programming for live performance.
2 Pneumatic and electric actuation.
3 Elementary feedback control.
4 Kinetic structure design.
5 Project conceptualization.
6 Project planning: storyboarding, sketching, diagramming, scheduling.
7 Proof-of-concept assembly and programming.
8 Proof-of-concept performance demo.
9 Detailed system design.
10 Purchasing, fabrication, software prototyping.
11 Final fabrication, software integration.
12 System integration.
13 Integration tests, Thanksgiving break.
14 Final testing and debugging, dress rehearsal.
15 Performance, documentation, review and critique.

Policies

Attendance

Coming to class on time is mandatory. We will take attendance at each class and three unexcused absences will cause you to lose 10% in your final grade, with an additional 10% for each successive missed class. If you must be absent, you must request approval in advance.. Late requests will be considered on a case by case basis. Unexcused absences during review days will also reduce your individual project grade.

Lateness

All assignments must be submitted by the required deadline, unless prior authorization is obtained from an instructor and documented in email. Verbal authorization is not sufficient: any verbal discussion of late submission must be documented with an emailed request and reply.

Assignments received within 24 hours of the deadline will receive half-score. Assignments received later than 24 hours will not be examined and receive zero score.

Assignments bounced for revision at the discretion of the instructor must be returned within 24 hours if not otherwise specified. This rule is meant to allow a grace period for reports which overlook a required element; please do not assume that incomplete work can be resubmitted.

However, please remember that something is always better than nothing. If the deadline is imminent, please submit whatever text, images, and drawings you can rather than do nothing. Always ask for an extension rather than silently fail to deliver.

IDeATe Facilities

Please read and become familiar with the IDeATe lending and purchasing policies, which can be accessed at https://resources.ideate.cmu.edu. The IDeATe facilities are shared student resources and spaces. As such, all members of the IDeATe community are expected to be respectful of the equipment, the spaces, and fellow students and their projects. Always clean up after completing your work, put things back in their correct place, and leave the lab in better condition than you found it.

Last updated 2018-03-23.