The Robot Etudes Mark Yim, Jimmy Sastra School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Pennsylvania Simon Kim School of Design University of Pennsylvania Abstract— In spring of 2010, architecture and engineering students at the University of Pennsylvania were teamed together to create artistic mechatronic robotic devices. The context for their creations was Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This became a joint effort between professors from Mechanical Engineering and Architecture and a director from a professional theater troupe instructing a group of students to develop a performance performed by the Pig Iron Theatre Troupe at the Annenberg Center called The Robot Etudes. Whereas robots have been used in theater before and artistic directors have instructed technicians to develop special effects robots, developing robotic elements specifically for theater with a diverse set of creative innovators is new. This paper focuses on the process by which the play was formed and the successes and struggles in forming a cooperative experiment between three very different disciplines. I. INTRODUCTION Robots have been introduced among live performers in the realm of dance as well as theatre often with robots either as the central piece of the action [1], [2] or as side props. In the former case, the impact of those events has often been on the uniqueness or curiosity of having a ”robot”, electro- mechanical element, where one is not expected. Often the juxtaposition of mechanical with biological on a stage is interesting and sometimes jarring. However, once the audi- ence has accepted this juxtaposition, it would be interesting to explore deeper interactions. Part of this work intends to explore those issues. The second major contribution of this work is the ex- amination of the interaction of three disparate disciplines: architecture, theater and engineering. In some cases, it is possible to have individuals who are multi-talented or have experiences in multiple domains. Such people can implement and translate as necessary among the disciplines but this production had experts in their respective domains that needed to learn from others. Engineers are naturally concerned with the technical re- quirements of making robots work and making them move efficiently. Architects are trained to think about space, scale, and enclosures that create an aesthetic environment much like a theater set. The design contribution from these non- theater fields is more likely to generate new concepts than using set-design professionals. Both engineers and architects are required to employ design strategies, but the evaluating criteria is not always shared. What engineers may call successful design in expediency, efficiency and performance may not coincide with the architectural design consideration of beauty, and sensory pleasure. Likewise what the actors may desire in terms of performance or reliability from the robot may not be technically feasible. The experiment for all groups was to create an enhanced theater experience that would be greater than a sum of its parts Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was chosen as the focus of the play, fitting within a series of explorations into this play by Pig Iron Theater. The play is about four young lovers and a group of amateur actors, who are manip- ulated by fairies who inhabit a magical forest. Rather than simply implementing the play with robots as actors or as set pieces, the focus was on the “magical forest” in which much of the play takes place. This way the non-human nature of electro-mechanical components could fit well theatrically and are used to bring about the themes of love and manipulated love. A. Previous Work In this work we are interested in the interaction between human and robot actors so we describe some of the previous work done in which robots shared the stage with human actors, as opposed to a performance by robots only. The first instance of using robotic technology among dancers is described in Margo Apostolo’s work on Robot Choreography [3]. This work concerned itself mainly with how to make robot arms move in an aesthetically graceful way and also brings to our attention the danger of using large robot arms that can easily injure humans. Nonetheless, robot arms as tall as 2.5 meters played parts in Invisible Cities (a robot ballet), Mars Suite, Orbital Landing and Sunset on Mars [4]. In a play called Robottens Anatomi several robots includ- ing a modular robot called Odin were used [5]. This play consisted of a series of interviews of scientists including real robotics researchers talking about their research. They demonstrate what their robots can do. Later they bring in an actor who plays the part of a very sophisticated robot doing similar things. They blur the line between what is unbelievable and believable. The insertion of robots into a complete theatre play is described in [6]. Four quad rotors and six toy helicopters were tele-operated and paired with human actors on the stage. This work also concidentally involved Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The authors discuss the impor- tance of improvisation during the play as a reaction to a crash or errant behavior of the robots and describe a preliminary taxonomy to create affect exchanges between robots and human groups.