Welcome to the Corona Stay Home edition of “U&I Robotic Dance” the first Flashmob for Robots. In order for you to participate you have to understand the short dance yourself and then “teach” it to your robot.
This page explains the choreography in a way that also works for people who do not like dancing themselves 🙂 Just in case we also created a series of videos as additional help which you will soon find at the end of this page.
Send us your Video !
From Sunday May 10th to Sunday May 17th you can participate in the project by sending a video of your robot dancing to the U&I-song.
You can download it here
All the videos will be edited into one big video. If you want to participate please click here.
On Saturday, May 23rd 2020 all the participants of the video call will be invited to a video conference where they a chance to make their robots dance together LIVE. The exact time of the conference still has to be defined.
Who can participate?
Just as in the live event version of U&I everyone is invited to participate with any kind of robot. All you have to do, is to teach your robot at least one, if possible two sections of the U&I-RD-choreography. The complete robotic dance consists of 9 sections.
What are the 9 sections of U&I-choreography?
The whole dance consists of the following nine sections and includes parts to be danced by all robots and special sections for specific kinds. So depending on the kind of robot participating, you will learn different sections
- Intro
- Chorus
- Verse 1 Canoids
- Verse 2 Insectoids
- Chorus
- Verse 3 Humanoids
- Verse 4 Industrial and household robots
- Air time for drones
- Chorus
The Chorus – Coordination and Unison
- The Chorus is danced 3 times during the song
- The movements remain the same each time
- The movements are extremely simple
This way the chorus can be executed and danced by ALL participating robots, independent of their individual sizes and movement quality.
It is very important that you stick to the patterns in space and the timing. Only then all movements will be in unison!
Individual verses – Artistic Freedom
The 4 verses provide the opportunity for you to show us your creativity in programming your robot. There are four sections for different types of non flying robots:
- Canoids
- Insectoids
- Humanoids
- Industrial and Household robots
During these sections – with 4 x 8 beats each – we are looking forward to a loooooot of creative programming. Show us what special tricks you were able to teach to your robots 🙂
Air Time – the Drone Section
After all the walking robots have performed we defy gravity and invite the drones to joinn the dance.
The first challenge of the drone section is to make your drones follow patterns in space. So you are basically painting in the air 🙂
There are two shapes we require of you: a square and a big circle.
When you have managed to do this you have an extra 2 x 8 beats as a free improvised section.
Surprise us with your creativity!
Preparing your Robot Dance Floor and the Camera position
In the Corona version each robot acts will dance on his own “robot dancefloor” and be recorded by a camera.
Your camera should capture the whole width of it.
In order to have good material to edit the video, we suggest to keep the camera on a tripod.
Do not move the camera around when your robot dances and do not zoom in or out with your camera.
There are 3 important points on the dance-floor which you might like to mark.
- Point C (center)
- Point E (entrance)
- Point F (front)
Point C is the perfect center of the dancefloor. When standing on point C your robot should be clearly visible as a whole figure.
Point E is the entrance or the starting point on the left side of your dance floor. When standing on point E your robot should be only with a small part of his body all the way on the left.
Point F is the front of the stage. When standing on point F only your robot’s face should fill the whole picture of the camera.
Recording your video
To make editing simple for us please record a complete video with the whole song. We will not be able to look at single sections!
We ask you to post it on your channel and we will provide links to very good results on our U&I Youtube channel.
(More detailed information how we will receive your videos and how we will edit them will follow soon!)
Detailed Choreographic explanations
Here you will find a detailed description of the choreography. The first column has the precise timing, column 2 the counts as dancers would all over the world would use to work.
With simple music that’s divisible into multiple phrases of 8 beats, dancers would count succeeding phrases of 8 with a so called BIG number at the beginning of each phrase:
ONE-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, TWO-2-3-4-5-6-7-8,
THREE-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, FOUR-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.
The third column gives you a little muscial cue and the 4th column contains the detailed info.
| Time (min: secs) | Counts (1 to 8) | Musical Cue | Movement for Robots |
| 0:00 | 2 x 8 | Fanfare | Intro |
| 0:07 | 6 x 8 | preparing for the show, warming up | |
| Chorus | Melody starts | Moving through the space | |
| 0:29 | 1 x 8 | Start at Point A: Center left – move to right until C – center of the stage(and of the picture | |
| 1,2,3,4 | jump/rise on beat 2, land 4 | ||
| 5,6,7,8 | wiggle the robots center | ||
| 1 x 8 | turning 360 ° (or more) | ||
| 1 x 8 | no sound here | complete stop of movement on beat 2 (Gong Sound!) – stand still | |
| 0:43 | 2 x 8 | 4 counts each stretching the upper limbs to the left, then to the right, repeat again slow | |
| 1 x 8 | try to double the speed !! 2 counts each left, right, left, right | ||
| 1 x 8 | repeat and move towards the camera continue to wiggle with the extremities | ||
| 1 x 8 | “Face to face” with the camera 🙂 robots can blink an eye, smile, wiggle with one small part | ||
| 1 x 8 | Move back to point C | ||
| Verse 1 | Cats and Dogs | Canoids (four-legged robots) | |
| 1:05 | 4 x 8 | This is the improv section Anything works ! You could try – legs in the diagonal – changing legs front and back – chasing you tail | |
| Verse 2 | Crazy Critters | Insectoids (6 or more legs) | |
| 1:20 | 4 x 8 | Improv for Insectoids moving in patterns across the floot e.g. flooding the floor from behind to front If you have more than one robot try circling each other | |
| 1:34 | 8 x 8 | Chorus 2 – like Chorus 1 | |
| all non-insectoids start at point E again | |||
| Verse 3 | Humanoid Disco | Humanoids or other bi- or mono-pedal robots | |
| 2:11 | 4 x 8 | Human voices as a choir | copying Hiphop, Ballett or othe dance style movements ! the more exciting this is, the higher are the chances to be included in your final video also feel free to dance along your android robot yourself doing summersaults |
| Verse 4 | Gulliver and Liliput | Industrial and household robots | |
| 2:25 | 4 x 8 | Machine sounds | very fast rhythmical movements along the movement lines of the individual robots if you want to, stand next to the industrial robot and move your body along with it |
| Air Time | Dancing Drones | Any flying robots 🙂 | |
| 2:40 | 2 x 8 | Lift off slowly to 2 about 2 m height (can be in spirals) | |
| 1 x 8 | flying a square 50 cm to the right | ||
| 1 x 8 | 50 cm down | ||
| 1 x 8 | 50 cm left | ||
| 1 x 8 | 50 cm up | ||
| 2 x 8 | doing one big vertical circle (M: 120 cm, r=80 cm) starting top, ending top | ||
| 2 x 8 | Free variations od shapes in space (you could try letters or numbers) | ||
| 3:09 | 8 x 8 | Chorus 3 | |
| all non-flying robots start at point E again, drones do the movements in the air above the others !! | |||
| 3:44 | 1 x 8 | Fanfare | Wonderful selfie shots of you and your robot 🙂 |
if you have any questions, please contact us at regie@kreissig.net.
Steps for successful participation
- download the music
- program you robot to execute the required movements in the correct timing of the song
- make a video of your dancing robot
- if you want to officially participate, don’t forget to apply
- upload the video
Partners and collaborators
The music was composed by composer Axel Christian Schullz.
The logo was designed by Anika Caumanns.
The Corona Stay Home Online version is tested in cooperation with the international EU-STEM-awards
This website is continuously improved. The last time this specific subpage has been updated was April 20th 2020. In case you are able to spot any typos or a blocked link, please do not hesitate and let us know by sending an email to regie(at)kreissig(dot)net including a link of the specific subsite. I appreciate your feedback and hope you will have a wonderful day :- )
