Temporal scaling of leg motion for music feedback system of a dancing humanoid robot

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a method to achieve temporal scaling of leg motions as a fundamental technique for a music feedback system of a dancing humanoid robot. We asked dancers to perform dance motion at normal musical tempo and faster musical tempos and observed how dancers modified performance for given musical tempos. The obtained insights from the observation are 1) a dancer needs to preserve leg postures that are important to emphasize dance expression, 2) there is a priority to determine what features of leg motion can be adjusted, and 3) stylistic leg motion resembles normal step motion if dancers cannot follow fast musical tempo completely. Based on these insights, we generate leg motion appropriately adjusted for changing musical tempo while maintaining balance. We validated our method via simulation experiments with a humanoid robot HRP-2.