Autonomous Robot Dancing Synchronized to Musical Rhythmic Stimuli
Catarina B. Santiago, Armando Sousa, João Lobato Oliveira, Luís Paulo Reis · Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) · 2011
This paper presents a system that is able to control in real time a humanoid robot to perform dance movements to the rhythm of a music. The movements' coordination is performed with the aid of a music analyzer that estimates the beat of the music and calculates a prediction of the next inter-beat-interval (IBI). During the robot dancing performance, a dance movement is chosen from a pre-defined dance library and is executed onthe- fly by the robot. The movements' velocity, as well as the attended metrical-level, are adjusted in real time so that the movement can be executed within the time interval of two beats, and at the same time taking into consideration the robot motorrates limitations. Results evince a good synchrony of the movement towards the analyzed rhythm, but points to the need of a careful design of the dance movements so they can be naturally executed on time.