Layering Laban Effort Features on Robot Task Motions

Abstract

Motion is an essential area of social communication that has the potential to enable robots and people to collaborate naturally, develop rapport, and seamlessly share environments. The Laban Effort System is a well-known methodology from dance and acting training that has been in active use teaching performers to overlay sequences of motion with expressivity for over fifty years. We present our methodology to layer expression on robot base motions, using the same set of joints for both procedural task completion and expressive communications, followed by early results on the legibility of our Effort implementations and how their settings affect robot projections of state.