Robotic Dancer

What is it?

Robotic Dancer is a game that playfully combines rigid body dynamics and musical synchronization.  The user can experiment by linking the instruments from a musical score directly to forces and torques on the bodyparts of a 3D model.  The game comes with a wide variety of robots, and the possibility to load models directly from an internet community. This way, users can share their performances and their robots.  Robot dancer uses an innovative user interface to present the wealth of information generated by the music clearly.

What does it look like?

Here are some screenshots:

A small movie is available on youtube that shows the gameplay. The avi version is fairly large (32MB) and may need the xvid codec, therefore we advice you to just download the program.  So only if all else fails download this movie.

Download

Currently, only a windows version is available (download, 12MB), but since we developed it on linux, you can expect a linux version soon.

Running

Just unzip everything into a directory, and then start 'run.exe', or create a shortcut that supplies the commandline arguments like so: run.exe rx 1024 ry 768 fullscreen

Ok so the program runs, now what?

The goal of this little demonstration is letting simple robots move (some would say dance) to the music.

This can be done by linking behaviors of body parts and joints to events in the music (shown in the instrument in the lower part of the screen)

How does the interface work?

First load a robot using the 'load robot' button in the file menu.

Then load some music using the 'load music' button.

Now try navigating around the robot by moving the mouse while keeping the middle mouse button pressed. You can also zoom in and out using the scroll-wheel.

The robot is now probably just sitting there doing nothing. Ready to disco?

Click on the 'edit' button. You'll now see the object go transparent and some yellow boxes.

These boxes visualize the body parts and joints of the robot.

Now hover the mouse over the instrument bar below (the one with all the colorful dots) and select one of them, be sure to choose one with some activity in it.

Now a number of graphs on the left side of the screen will pop up, these show a response to the chosen instrument. Select one of these by clicking on them.

You can now apply forces or torques on bodies and joints by selecting one of the yellow boxes.

If you did this correctly you'll see the applied force visualized by a purple arrow if a body was chosen or a purple fan if a joint was chosen.

Now exit the edit mode using the 'play' button to see how the robot responds to the music.

One can save and load the performance using the 'save performance' and 'load performance' buttons in the file menu.

Contact

This program was made by Jorik Blaas and Edwin Jakobs.