Robot Choreography: The Use of the Kinetography Laban System to Notate Robot Action and Motion

Abstract

Roboticists aim to segment robot actions into a sequence of motion primitives to simplify the robot programming phase. Choreographers aim to capture the essence of human body movements within a sequence of symbols that can be understood by dancers. To that extent, roboticists and choreographers pursue the same quest. We have undertaken a pluridisciplinary approach, combining a dance notation system (the Kinetography Laban system) with a robot programming system [the Stack of Task (SoT)]. Motion scores are used instead of quantitative data to compare and enlighten differences in robot and human movements. We then discuss plausible origins of these differences, taking into account the implicit rules of the Kinetography Laban system on how a movement is executed by humans. This comparison, in the light of the Kinetography Laban system, opens some challenging questions related to motion segmentation and motion naturalness.