UC's HIT Lab NZ making robots dance Gangnam Style!

The University of Canterbury (UC) HIT Lab NZ is making robots dance: Gangnam Style!

More than 650 million people worldwide have already watched South Korean Psy’s charismatic dance moves. Now the UC human-robot inter-action group at the HIT Lab NZ (Human Interface Technology Laboratory NZ) is taking it to the next level by making their humanoid robots dance the crazy horse dance.

See the youtube link here: See: http://youtu.be/51vQo-imc4Q

Apart from the entertaining value of the cutting-edge robot work, they were also learning more about the dancing and the art of robot animation, UC PhD student Eduardo Sandoval said today.

``The robots have a lot of physical constraints that we need to know about. Creating this dance made me more aware of certain technical problems, such as how to keep the robot in balance.’’

UC researcher Dr Christoph Bartneck said the dance performance was part of the HIT Lab’s strategy to more closely relate to the fine arts.

``Bringing together creative work with technical expertise can result in intriguing performances and a better understanding of human-robot relationships.

``The goal of Eduardo’s work was to maintain the spirit of Psy’s performance while working within the limitations of robots. For example, it is difficult to represent a “Sexy Lady”, but fortunately, our UC robots ‘Kiwi PaPeRo’ came to the rescue.

``Many viewers have already responded very enthusiastically to about the video and it has gone viral with the University of Canterbury,’’ Dr Bartneck said.