Spot’s simple robotic movements were synchronized to music as a series of flowing motions: the extension of the legs forward as if in a crawl, elegant swoops of the robot’s long neck like a ballerina’s arms, and little steps on its rounded feet.

Researchers in this area investigate the optimal ways of translating the fluid transitions between human movements into robotic code. Choreographers bring an integral perspective on how best to interpret motion through technology, and computer scientists enable the technology to produce those movements.

Students are further exploring this research space beyond the choreorobotics course; for example, they worked with choreographer and CRCI artist-in-residence Yanira Castro to build and instruct a robot to perform with a güícharo, a traditional Puerto Rican musical instrument.

“As robotics gets applied to different fields, new subproblems appear that have never really been considered and act as a test bed or a research bed for developing new technologies that can be applied to other areas,” said Choreorobotics 0101 co-instructor Eric Rosen ’18, PhD’23, who also helped design the course.

Researchers are investigating how robots can communicate with people without words. Other questions involve how robots can be programmed to understand and respond to their surroundings more independently rather than being limited to concrete scripts of code.

The field also presents an ethical dilemma. Given the emotional, communicative essence of choreography and the historically utilitarian, function-first nature of robotics, “the logic applied to this field becomes very one-sided, either purely qualitative or purely quantitative” if choreographers and roboticists aren’t both involved, said Madeline Morningstar ’21, a consultant in emerging technologies and experience management and CRCI’s former director of curriculum. “We get so excited about what we can build that we don’t think about whether we should.”

Skybetter noted that artistic pursuits in choreorobotics can serve multiple purposes, sometimes in opposition to the creators’ intentions. Morningstar offered an example: programming robots to dance can serve as a test of their physical capability for police work, while the resulting entertainment helps robots appeal to the public.

“Robots’ proliferation into personal, social, and civic spheres will generate new ways of meaning-making and relationality,” said Skybetter. “Robots will increasingly be members of society on some emergent level.”

“To engage in this work without an expanded timescale is dangerous, though,” he continued. “This technology is cool, but there are people’s actual bodies on the line when robots are deployed in civic, domestic, policing, and martial contexts. I want our students to understand the dynamics between robots and people’s bodies as being real and tangible and with corporeal consequences.”