Robotic characters are becoming widespread as useful tools for both assistive and entertainment applications in the domain of human-robot interaction. Research on robot animation has therefore been struggling to overcome the physically limited expressivity that is inherent to a robotic embodiment.
However, current generic robot animation and interaction systems require deep mathematical and programming skills, which makes it difficult for artists to collaborate with programmers in order to achieve the illusion of life in robotic characters.
NuttyTracks was therefore developed is a symbolic real-time animation system that is fit for animating any robotic character using animation tools that are commonly used by professional animators. We have integrated it into Autodesk® 3ds Max® software as an external plug-in. Our system brings artists and programmers closer to each other in the quest for bringing the illusion of life to robotic characters.
By bringing animation to a symbolic level, we will be able to connect it with Artificial Intelligence systems. It will also allow us to procedurally generate and apply operators or filters on the animation curves in real-time, independently of the robot used.
This work was presented as a poster at SIGGRAPH'13, in Ahaneim, CA.
There, it was distinguished as a Finalist in the Student Research Competition!
Feel free to contact me through tiago.ribeiro (at) gaips.inesc-id.pt!
Bibliographic Reference:
Ribeiro, T., Dooley, D., & Paiva, A. (2013). Nutty Tracks: Symbolic Animation Pipeline for Expressive Robotics. ACM International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Posters - SIGGRAPH ’13.
Manuscript:
gaips.inesc-id.pt/component/gaips/publications/showPublicationPdf?pid=335&format=raw
More on me and my work:
tiagoribeiro.pt
