Exercise: Simulation Conversation

The main objective of this exercise is to create a performance in which two simulated machines perform together in a common world. The conceit is that the two machines should appear to communicate, e.g., they might be carrying out a conversation.

The creative objective is an understanding that we perceive the inner state of humans, animals, and machines by observing what they do and how they react. Presenting two machines in the same space provides new opportunities for them to coordinate and appear to react to each other.

Following are some suggested starting points:

• create movements with a sense of individual identity

• embody empathy and communication in movement

• portray the locus of attention via gesture and pose

• illustrate a process of turn-taking

• imply a dialogue

• express a relationship

More inspirations:

• Tai Chi: tuishou

• Ballet: Pas de deux

• DUETS (1980) - Merce Cunningham Dance Company, 2011

• jazz music or dance cutting contest

Side note: in a real-world performance, a pair of robots communicating with physical tactile contact can also create opportunities for human interaction by safely interposing the human between the robots.

Objectives

After this exercise, you should be able to:

1. Formulate a two-agent narrative as a choreographic concept which can be translated into behaviors.

2. Improvise gestural performance to discover expressive opportunities.

3. Convey intuitive, emotional, communicative expression through the gestural movement of a kinetic sculptural form.

4. Simulate and render a one-minute composition.

Resources

• You are welcome to use any two robot models you like, although a suggested starting point is the zyy.wbt model including two of the ZYY Robot Arm Model.

• All sample Webots worlds are included in the reference project Webots.zip described under Webots Robot Simulator Examples.

Deliverables

1. A Webots simulator project including two machines in the A11 space performing a conversation over a full 60 second duration.

2. A Google Doc with a brief paragraph describing your choreographic intent and outcome, submitted within a subfolder of the appropriate shared folder.

3. Your Python controller script uploaded as one or more files.

4. One-minute video clip of robot performance, uploaded to the Google Shared Drive and included as a link within the document.

5. Zip file of your Webots project. Please give distinctive names to your modified worlds, controllers, and protos (or delete the extraneous ones), and please preserve the folder structure (e.g. worlds/, protos/, controllers/) so it could be unpacked and used.