Below are demos I have run at OMSI After Dark events, which are 21+ nights at the museum. For all my demos, the main goal is to get people excited about robotics and also get them thinking about expressive motion and how robots could potentially use different types of expressive motion.
Apart from my science communication goals, each demo also served as a space for me to test out different research ideas. These research goals are detailed below.
Are you a superhero or a supervillain? Come find out and let our super-robots lead you to join an exclusive dance party!
This demo focused on multi-part interactions with people. My goal was to explore how different aspects of my MoTiS system could be used to facilitate various types of complex interactions.
I had four robots acting as “security guards” to two different dance areas: one for superheroes and one for supervillains. The participants stood in the “Superhero or Supervillain Determination Zone” and the robots approached the participants with a social behavior, for example a friendly approach. After approaching, the robots guided the participants to either the superhero or supervillain dance area. The robots then danced with the participants.
Who goes there? This haunted house is patrolled by two haunted house cats that move through the crowd, ensuring their haunted house stays safe.
The goal of this demo was to see how museum patrons responded when robots moved in their space in a crowd. The robots moved both together and separately through large crowds of people and observed how people reacted and sometimes interacted with the robots.
Some alien robots have landed on Earth! They seem to notice that humans use expressive motion to communicate, but they can't quite figure out how. Can you figure out what they are trying to communicate?
This demo focused on how people perceived robots moving at different speeds and directions. After watching the robots emerge from their UFO, patrons were asked what they thought the robots were trying to communicate, and what about their motion lead them to that conclusion.