TheatreBot
TheatreBot
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| Short Description: | Aim of this project is to produce autonomous robots able to play on stage together with human actors, possibly improvising, or in any case facing the casualities occurring on the scene. |
| Coordinator: | AndreaBonarini (andrea.bonarini@polimi.it) |
| Tutor: | AndreaBonarini (andrea.bonarini@polimi.it) |
| Collaborator: | |
| Students: | JulianMauricioAngelFernandez (julianmauricio.angel@polimi.it) |
| Research Area: | Robotics |
| Research Topic: | Robot development |
| Start: | 2013/01/12 |
| End: | 2016/12/31 |
| Status: | Active |
| Level: | PhD |
| Type: | Thesis |
Emotions must be projected by theatre's actors to their whole audience to make these last belief in the played character and to engage them in the play: this same principle is used in effective social relations. A theatrical robot actor should be built with the objective to make the robot perform as well as human actors and it should have a simple interface to enable untrained people to give it basic instructions that it can interpret to effectively play its role in the piece. This work is focused on the development of a system and platform that fulfill all necessary specifications for this robot actor. The development of a theatrical actor is a first step towards the implementation of effective autonomous robots in communication with people; the system and platform could be extended to others areas where showing emotions are important as in robot games and assistive robots.
Why Theatre?
Although theatre involves many elements, the main one is audience’s imagination making the difference among theatre, television and movies. Additionally, the performance of each play is made live, making each presentation unique and unrepeatable. Theatre’s actors have to embody characters that have its personal life, temper, and own way to express his self: voice intonation, words, and event movements. Thus, actors’ challenge is convince the spectators that the characters that they are portraying are real. As a consequence, actors must to learn how bring to life characters, which includes think about their personality, likes and dislikes, and most important how the character shows emotions through his movements. These movements must be coherent with the moves of the other characters and work in harmony to make the play be a successful.
