at Tate Britain: Bauhaus Recoded on Nov. 1st 2019
Reconfigurable Modular Robots
a tangible interface for collaborative human robot interaction
Team : Kongpyung Moon and Peng Gao
Role : Concept, Programming and Electronics
CuGo is an interactive board game, where human and robot players collaborate to achieve a shared goal. It consists of a game board, on which modular reconfigurable robots, perform unpredictable movements, as well as passive blocks that are moved by both human and robot players. The goal of the game is to stack the passive blocks as high as possible.The player moves the passive blocks on the board into a position where they think the robot can grab them. When the passive blocks are in reachable zone, the robots use their inverse kinematic intelligence to reach the passive units, but when they are not accessible, the robots suggest alternative positions to the player.
Dramatic developments in artificial intelligence have established the fact that the performance of AI for specialised tasks will surpass those of humans. CuGo is a tangible platform where both intelligence of human and machine are encouraged to participate to achieve a common goal, breaking the anxiety between two entities. While most artificial intelligence studies focus on autonomous systems, CuGo seeks a comprehensive understanding of artificial intelligence, proposing a human centric, shared autonomy.
CuGo introduces a user-friendly environment not only for technologists, but for people without any AI related knowledge. With a proper learning model, CuGo creates a mutual learning system where players can observe how the robot performs and learn the logic behind their movements, at the same time, the robots can gradually build their “personality”, namely unique ways of moving. The current gaming process is a basic demonstration of the CuGo system, future variants of CuGo with a further developed learning ability could provide more freedom to play, allowing human players to design their own rules and goals for the game.
Exhibition:
- Here-East, London, UK
- Barbican Centre Life Rewired Hub, London, UK
- Ars Electronica Festival 2019, Linz, Austria
- Tate Britain Bauhaus Recoded, London, UK
Mass Development
Human players are encouraged to move the passive blocks on the board, then, CuGo responds to the displaced passive blocks. If its on reachable zone it uses its own kinematic intelligence to grab and stack on top of the others, but if not it suggest one possible movement for human players
when no target is detected, it suggests possible movements
more than one robot can be placed on the board
when a target is detected, it grabs the target
more than one passive blocks can be attached on a robot
one unit = 3 rotation states
two units = 9 rotation states
four units = 81 rotation states
three units = 27 rotation states
when powered from the board and connected to the network, units go to middle position (0 degrees)
courtesy of Jaehyeong Yoo
Indirect Interaction between robots, a robot can affect the other's behavior by placing the passive block on their reachable zone
courtesy of Jaehyeong Yoo
courtesy of Jaehyeong Yoo
While industrial robot arm's joints axis are perpendicular to each other, CuGo's joint axis are angular. Therefore, it requires temporal extra frames to calculate DH parameters.
Due to unit's discrete rotations( -120, 0 and 120 degrees) instead of applying gradient descent optimization, lookup table (hash) is generated for inverse kinematics.
90 degrees
4 frames
180 degrees
5 frames
270 degrees
6 frames
0 degrees
4 frames
CuGo's kinematic changes according to the neighbor modules, therefore, DH frames has to be modular as well. Computer generates hash according to relative orientation of the chained modules.