Roboscopie: a live performance for an human and a robot
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The storyline
Xavier and PR2, its robotic companion, try to find ways to understand each other.
Xavier and PR2 share a white, almost empty, stage. To get the robot to see his world, Xavier must keep being recognized by the human tracking module that lies on the wall, and must stick everywhere 2D barcodes, instead of the real objects. The robot can read and identify these barcodes, and while the stage get covered by the tags, the robot constructs for itself a 3D world with the right-looking objects: a phone, a lamp, a hanger...
While Xavier is drawing more and more of these 2D tags, the robot tries to offer its help. It brings first a bottle of water, then a fan... which blows away all Xavier's code. Angry, Xavier leaves, and PR2 remains alone.
The night comes, and the robot decides to explore the stage, scattered with those barcodes on the ground.
On the next morning, Xavier enters, and as soon as he get recognized by the tracking system, he discovers that the robot's 3D model is a mess, full of random objects: an elephant, a boat, a van... Xavier resets the robot model with a special black tag, and starts to tidy up the place.
The robot decides to help, fetches a trashbin, but starts to behave strangely (or is it playing?) and both Xavier and PR2 start a clumsy basket ball game with paper balls.
The robot suddently gives up and a new program slowly starts: a home-training session. Xavier seems to be expecting it, switches his tshirt, and starts the exercices. But as the program goes along, the robot looks more and more menacing, up to the point that Xavier shouts "Stop!".
Xavier shows one after the other the objects -- well, the barcodes of the objects -- to the robot, explaining there are all fake, and one after the other, the robot connects in its mind the objects to the idea of being fake. And like the robot, we realize that everything was just an experiment.
Making-of
Scientific relevance
One of the main scientific challenge the LAAS/CNRS laboratory tries to tackle is autonomy: how to build a robot as autonomous as possible. Acting in a theatre play requires almost the opposite ability: actors are asked to closely follow the director artistic choices.
From a research point of view, automony It means that, as robotic scientists, we do not want our robot to be too much autonomous. to act in a theatre performance sim