From RoboNova to HUBO: Platforms for Robot Dance

A robot with the ability to dance in response to music could lead to novel and interesting interactions with humans. For example, such a robot could be used to augment live performances alongside human dancers. This paper describes a system enabling humanoid robots to move in synchrony with music. A small robot, the Hitec RoboNova, was initially used to develop smooth sequences of complex gestures used in human dance. The system uses a real-time beat prediction algorithm so that the robot’s movements are synchronized with the audio. Finally, we implemented the overall system on a much larger robot, HUBO, to establish the validity of the smaller RoboNova as a useful prototyping platform.