MARIOBOT: marionette robot that interact with an audience

A marionette is a puppet operated by human manipulator using strings and control bar. It is an ancient and universal form of performing art. Marionettes have been used for entertainment for centuries because people are fascinated with unique and funny movements of marionettes.

In this video, we introduce a new type of entertainment robot for theatrical performances. Our MARIOBOT (marionette robot) is driven by a robotic controller that consists of eight motors and their coupling components. Each motor pulls the string connected to corresponding marionette's joint. This robot freely moves along the stage hung by a mobile base platform.

In order to show the capabilities of our robot actor on the stage, this video with scripts demonstrates the performance of the robot. We also show a few audience-robot interaction methods, as from the perspective of the modern performances on the stage, the feature of interaction with the audience draws much of interests and appeals to the audience [1]. The audience loses attention quickly during a passive performance. Therefore, we need to consider appropriate HRI techniques to keep the audience's attention lively. However typical stage environment in the theater is not well-conditioned to accommodate the vision based HRI methods, because of: luminance of theater, distance between robot and the audience, etc. To overcome these problems, we present effective methods for interaction with the audience and the situations related to these methods on the video together with the system overview.