Dancing Robots Are Cutting In

Most of the innovation in collaborative robots is driven by the economic need for accuracy, efficiency and speed of production. The very word “robot,” which was coined in 1920 by Czech playwright Karel Čapek, comes from the root “robota,” which in Czech means forced labor and servitude.

Maybe that’s why we’re afraid the machines will someday turn against us. That’s not a new fear. In a 1942 short story called “Runaround,” Isaac Asimov introduced what he called “three laws of robotics,” in which he advanced the idea that the single most important consideration in the further development of robots was the prevention of harm that machines might cause to humans.

But what if humans were the aggressors and robots the victims?

That was the premise of “Slave/Master, ” a 2017 installation and performance at London’s V&A Museum. Featuring humans dancing with robots, the work showcased increasingly anxious and evasive behavior by machines in response to the human dancers, whose movement over time became more abrupt and erratic. In terms of how artists are addressing provocative questions about our relationship with machines, “Slave/Master” was just the beginning.

Artists and choreographers around the world now combine state-of-the-art collaborative robots with dance as a means to explore the frontier of human-robot relations. Last year, the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, in collaboration with Kennesaw State University, developed FOREST, a dance and music show featuring robots and humans performing in close proximity. The project studied robots’ improvised and emotive responsiveness to movement and sound, but most importantly, developers say, it was a trust-building experience.

The final performance saw the dancers, musicians and robots improvising and moving in a synchronized flow. Some of the mechanical protagonists, such as a robot called Shimon, practiced their skills in rap battles with a human collaborator and became low-key famous. (You can find FOREST on Spotify. )

Engineering and robotics firm Boston Dynamics developed a dog-like robot called Spot and, over several years, the firm has released carefully choreographed videos featuring this flagship product along with a human-like robot called Atlas. In videos that have gone viral, robots perform complicated parkour and dance routines. Monica Thomas, a professional choreographer and dancer who collaborated with Boston Dynamics, emphasized that working with the robots offered creative challenges to her essential ideas about movement and opened her eyes to the choreographic possibilities thanks to the unique ways in which robots move.

There is, however, a darker side.

Boston Dynamics’ roboticist Eric Whitman has praised choreography as a means of optimizing existing hardware. Yet such optimization translated directly into Boston Dynamics’ successful deployment of robots into military and police environments. When the robot Spot dances, it practices its coordination skills and gains understanding of its surroundings, all crucial for its effectiveness as a surveillance tool or weapon.

After extensive dance practice, Spot was deployed by the NYPD to conduct surveillance on the streets of New York, which caused a public uproar and was criticized by Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for being used specifically to monitor low-income communities of color.

In response, New York City Councilor Ben Kallos proposed a law that would ban the use of weaponized robots by the police. Spot’s reputation as a hostile technology was then solidified by its depictions as a killer robot in the popular TV series “Black Mirror” and “War of the Worlds, ” as well as artistic projects like “Spot’s Rampage. ”