LumaBot: An Immersive Interactive Art Installation

robotics / human-machine collaboration / interaction design / art / computer vision

Luma is an interactive robotic art piece using an UR5 robotic arm. Audience members can fluidly control the movement of the robot by shining a flashlight onto an acrylic screen. The robotic arm movement would mimic movements of user, projecting a moving spotlight onto a dichroic film, which illuminated a facing wall, thus creating an immersive interactive art light experience.

By using an illuminated acrylic screen and OpenCV to detect the brightest position of light, the system can be controlled with either a light source or the touch of a finger.

The positions of light are sent over to a Unity client, where the robotic movements are scripted. Next, the robot movements are sent over to VREP, a robot simulator, to finally control the robotic arm remotely over Wifi.

See it in action: on Youtube

This project was made over a course of a week during an IAP workshop called Synthesizing Human and Robot Movements for Art Production.

In collaboration with Alice Zhu, Owen Trueblood, and Noah Trueblood