Robot Improv : Using Drama to Create Believable Agents

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Robot Improv Using Drama to Create Believable
Agents

• Allison Bruce, Jonathan Knight, Samuel Listopad,
  Brian Magerko,
• Illah Nourbakhsh

2
Motivation

• Physical robots as believable agents
• Instead of modeling human behavior, model the
  behavior of actors
• Mechanism is known
• Designed for believability

3
Definitions

• Hero
• Villain
• Outer obstacles
• Inner obstacles
• Given circumstances

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The Play

• Two robots in acting class
• Improvisation an introductory exercise

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Implementation

• Nomad Scouts
• Planner and motion control
• code written in Java
• 900 Mhz Radio Modems
• Text-to-speech synthesis
• software

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Play Architecture

• Room
• Props
• Actors
• Inner obstacles
• Goals
• Behaviors
• Inner obstacles
• Actions

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Execution Loop

• Listen and Update
• Success function
• Inner obstacle perturbation and decay
• Choose Action
• 2-level hierarchical planner
• Act
• Sonar-based obstacle avoidance
• Communicate
• Position, Action, Dialog

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Experiments

• First public performance April 99 at CMU
• Performed at AAAI 99 robotics exhibition 10-15
  times using 6 actor personalities
• Performed 18 more times at CMU for video
  documentation

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Performances
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Results

• Embodiment matters
• Improvisation relies on physical factors
• Possible improvements
• More sophisticated dialog selection
• Transitions between behaviors
• Public response
• Future work
• Longer, more complex plays
• Acting with humans