1

TEAM

Juan J. Ramirez -

Co-Producer

Mac Lotze -

Co-Producer

Jon Lew -

UX/UI Designer

Robin Lee -

Programmer

Xiaoyi Zhang -

Programmer

Jiahao Xia -

Artist

Rachina Ahuja -

Artist

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ADVISORS

Mike

Christel

Shirley Saldamarco

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CLIENT

…..

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

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WHO IS HERB?

5

BIG PICTURE

April

30 GUI

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DELIVERABLES

Set of expressive animations

An intuitive and flexible interface

Open-source code

More efficient pipeline

Quarters

6

WHAT WE PRESENTED

Pre-production Research and Meetings,

Brainstorm, Production

Environment, Concepts.

Sketches, Wireframes, Mockups

Blender Setup Animations within

Blender.

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FEEDBACK

What are the long-term goals of the project?

Why not just puppeteer the robot?

Wiki instructions are inaccurate

(especially for external users)

Lacking robotics technical experience

CHALLENGES

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LIMITATIONS OF ANIMATING

A PHYSICAL ROBOT

26 degrees of freedom weird animations

Speed limit - 1.2 m/sec

No velocity discontinuities in physical world

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ARCHITECTURE

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User Testing

REHEARSALS

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Rehearsal Session with HERB and actress

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CORPORAL EXPRESSIONS TEST

Corporal Expression Test Participants express emotions in front of a camera. Goals Understand Corporal Language of emotions.

EMOTIONS PLAYTEST

Emotions Playtest Questionnaire with 9 animations of HERB.

What emotion is portrayed? How strong?

Goals Real feedback on HERB’s expressiveness.

General audience perceptions.

Info to iterate the animations and flow.

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EMOTIONS PLAYTEST

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Robert Plutchik’s Basic Emotions Theory:

• Fear

• Anger

• Sadness

• Disgust

• Joy

• Trust

• Anticipation

• Surprise

Confidence 95%

Confidence 13.5

Population 14000Sample size 53

Study Data

EMOTIONS PLAYTEST

Emotions Playtest Data & Results

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EMOTIONS PLAYTEST

Emotions Playtest Results

17 Intensity: 4.1 / 5

• Fear

• Anger

• Sadness

• Disgust

• Joy

• Trust

• Anticipation

• Surprise

EMOTIONS PLAYTEST

Emotions Playtest Results

17 Intensity: 4.4 / 5

• Fear

• Anger

• Sadness

• Disgust

• Joy

• Trust

• Anticipation

• Surprise

Where are we now?

(Design)

DESIGN CHALLENGES

Human Language Atomic Robot Animations

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DESIGN CHALLENGES

Balance expressiveness, scalability and physical limitations.

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NODE BASED SYSTEM

Compose actions to form animation

Drag and drop from an action library

to workspace

Needs to be responsive and robust

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WORKSPACE

ACTION LIBRARY

UI and Animation

The sheer number of animations are still a

concern

Hand-animating is neither scalable, nor in the

spirit of the project

Need to parameterize animations

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Research

• “The Effect of Posture and Dynamics on

the Perception of Emotions”

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OPENNESS

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VIDEO DEMO

OPENNESS

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Closed Open

INTENSITY

Retiming Curves animation curves/keyframes

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VIDEO DEMO

INTENSITY

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More

Intense

Less

Intense

LIMITATIONS

Open Graph means transitions need to be planned

NxN Too many transitions to hand check

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ANIMATION DESIGN

Lab’s Solution

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VIDEO DEMO

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Director Sam French on need for parameters

ANIMATION DESIGN

Our Proposed Solution

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Where are we now?

(Interface)

Work Space Action Library

INTERFACE

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INTERFACE

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Next Steps

SCHEDULE

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Goal W. 9 W. 10 W. 11 W. 12 W. 13 W. 14 W. 15 W. 16

Interface MVP

10 Animations Set

5 Animations Set

Interface Iteration

Animation Tweak

Polish and Deliver

Wrap-Up (Final Test)

Apr. 30th Performance

Notes

Ongoing

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CONCLUSION

Set of expressive animations Parameterized using Intensity and Openness

An intuitive and flexible interface Drag-and-drop from Action Library to Workspace

Open-source code and improve external

working pipeline

April 30th performance at Rauh Theatre

Garth Zeglin

Aaron Walsman

Jennifer King

Mike Christel

Shirley Saldamarco

Sam French

Chirag Raman

Steve Audia

Jon Underwood 37

SPECIAL THANKS