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Dancing Robots Help Preserve Japanese Culture
Neil Halelamien writes "As reported on robots.net and other sources, researchers at Tokyo have used the HRP-2 Promet humanoid robot to help preserve moves from ancient Japanese dance for future generations. The researchers used motion capture to record the movements of a dancing master, then encoded and replayed them on the robot. The HRP-2 Promet robots are themselves quite interesting, capable of standing up after lying down and non-autonomously operating a backhoe. The external appearance was created by a designer known for his work on several anime series."
Is it because I'm living in Japan and out of sync with all of you? Unfortunately, I can't think of much of substance to say on the topic. Sure, the Japanese are leaders in robotics, but everyone knows that. The dance topic itself is very complicated. My first real-life experience of watching Japanese dance was actually Noh theatre, which is a very special genre. The dancer was actually a "living cultural treasure", one of the old-timers who'd been dancing and chanting Noh for fifty years or so.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
If nobody wants to learn the dance now, it dies out. Then, if we want to know about the dance later, what will we do?
This is no different from writing down the moves in a book or filming them, except in that dancing robots could eventually record the moves in a way superior to that of a book.
Also, and this isn't really on the topic of Japanese dance, a dancing robot would be really useful for geeks. Many geeks would like to learn but are too embarassed to try with a real partner. It may be stupid, crazy, immature, or whatever, but it's a real block many experience.
Having danced with a robot might well make it easier to get out among the real people. That is, for those who are only afraid of screwing up, rather than pathologically afraid of humans. There is a distinction.
The whole point about dance and performing arts is that it is performed by something with a soul, a life, a sentient being. That way, feeling can be injected into a performance. To record the moves to be replayed verbatim over and over is insulting to say the least, and verging on the point of disgusting. It certainly isn't right.
Instead of Dancing Robots, why not teach the dance to a person in each generation, like it used to be?
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I consider myself a bit of a luddite.. I don't like a lot of technology, though I know a lot about it (out of fear maybe). I don't own much besides my computer, which I consider a useful tool when used correctly. No cell phone, TV, etc. But I like it when technology is used to solve problems without creating new ones.
I think this is a pretty cool use of technology. Think about it: you record a dance, and then you play it back with a humanoid robot, like you record a song on a tape player, or a movie with a camcorder. I mean, how *else* would you play back a recorded dance?? It is after all, the motion of the human body. If you record the moves, and you record a few videos, you've got all the information you need to teach a future generation.
The robot doesn't have the musculature and the movement of a human, but the technology does have room to improve. Think of it as a "wax cylinder" level of recording.
Now in 20 years when robots programmed by hookers are used as sex slaves, then I start to get sad about society and technology......
If nothing else - the thought of 'dancing robots' really freaks me out
In that case, I heartily suggest that you don't watch this video.
Tell that to the Okinawans; as young people, especially girls, leave the prefecture, they are having a harder and harder time finding people to learn traditional Okinawan dances. Is it better for the dance to be completely lost than for a robot to do it? Surely someone can learn it from the robot, but if its gone, its gone.
I'm sure a lot of people said the same thing when television could bring theatre into the home. A play on TV isn't real theatre, it loses its meaning.
Furthermore, it seems to me that you seem to think that the Japanese are all going to teach their robots to dance and they won't have to bother. That seems pretty unlikely. This is obviously another step in getting functioning robots, not a government program to make dancing machines. In short, I call typical American xenophobia.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
A specious argument, a dance does not serve to appease a group of amok stormtroopers - LOL. Seriously, the point I was trying to make here is that an ancient dance performed/preserved by a robot is in the same leaque with plastic flowers. They almost look the same and can be perfumed to smell similarly - but they never will be considered a flower. As usual, in our Westernized (i.e. analytical) frame of thinking we don't see the inherent meaning of what is considered cultural heritage. If it needs a robot to be preserved, then it's already lost - got it?
Reading this article gave me an idea:
I'm an avid swing dancer. In order to effectively learn new moves, I either have to see a video or have somebody teach me. With the video, I can replay it as many times as I want, but I only get one 2D angle. With a teacher I can appreciate the full 3D movement, but if I try to get them to replay too many times they get annoyed and smack me.
There's things like the Jiveoholic Dance Step Database, which is useful by limited to 2D.
Perhaps motion capture could be the best of both worlds? I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to capture the moves of expert swing dancers, and then have a piece of software to replay their movements in 3D. A user of the software could replay moves to their heart's content, switching to arbitrary angles. If robots like the HRP-2 ever become cheap and flexible enough, such motion capture could even be used to replay moves on the bots.
Some folks at MIT made a very rudimentary "swing dancing" robot arm, which provides swing dance leads. I wonder how long it'll be until we see humanoid robots capable of leading, or maybe even interpreting hand signals from a human and being capable of following.
Anything that furthers the advancement and evolution of robotics is fine with me. I'll buy one...