A humanoid robot is basically a collection of robots mounted to each other. When designing the entertainment robots for the Drake concert, andyRobot had to be very careful. The robot heads held super powerful lasers that had to be aimed away from the crowd for safety purposes. Yet, they also had to present spectacular choreography for the viewing audience. 

The application of standard industrial class robots by KUKA is enhanced by using them in an entertainment environment. andyRobot uses the same exact robots you might find in a manufacturing plant in a way that provides smooth, high precision motion night after night, even when the robots are continually moved from one location to the next. 

At each new arena, a team goes in to chalk out the location of the robots in four corners—often up to 200 feet apart from one another—which are brought in by semi-truck, carefully unloaded, and placed into precise location. The combined components are assembled to create each humanoid robot that rises above the crowd by over eight feet. Each multi-ton humanoid has a laser for a head and arms that hold 16-inch mirrors in each hand. During the Drake concert, the humanoids shoot lasers out of their heads and bounce them off the mirrors held by other robots standing across and diagonally from them, creating a spectacular lightshow over the heads of the audience. 

The overall show complexity of movement was created through andyRobot’s proprietary software Robot Animator. Robot Animator employs what is called inverse kinematics to control multiple robots. Inverse kinematics comes from computer animation and refers to how that field makes characters move on screen. In the physical world of robotics, this is when the robot follows a trajectory to reach an end point which makes the movement look more natural. Robot Animator is a plug-in that works inside Autodesk Maya. 

Because robots used in manufacturing move quickly until they are in position then stop abruptly, perform the operation, and move quickly away, there is a jerkiness to the movement. Think of it this way, in a stage production at a concert you want the precision that is required in a manufacturing facility only you don’t want the jerky start and stop motion. 

The robot movements created by Robot Animator must vary from slow to fast to follow the music being played, producing surgically exact movements at every show. Robot Animator is able to smoothly ramp up and ramp down every motion—and do it with precise accurately. According to Andy Flessas, President of andyRobot, “Grace of movement is created through Robot Animator’s Motion Planning software, which translates industrial robot motion into the language of animation.” 

Basically, to do this, the software must ease in and ease out of every movement. For example, it can take over thirty separate micro moves to provide one second of actual robot motion, all of which allows the humanoid robots at the Drake concert to look like they are dancing. 

The robots used in the Drake Concert include four KUKA KR210 robots, each with six axes of movement, and eight KUKA KR10 robots, with six axes of movement. All told, each of the four humanoid robots incorporates 18 axes of motion that must be precisely choreographed with one another. That’s 72 axes of motion that had to be programmed for a two-hour concert, second by second. 

andyRobot provides the key components necessary for all types of entertainment using the same robots you might see in any manufacturing plant. Adjusting them for multiple movements not normally found in industry, andyRobot exploits the precision required in manufacturing into a creative experience for a large audience. 

For more information: 

andyRobot

Autodesk Maya 

ABB Robotics

KUKA Robotics