Hardware Podcasts

Episode 124: Robots in the performing arts - Amy LaViers

Robot Talk · 6 Jun 2025 · 22m · Episode 124

What this episode covers

Amy LaViers, director of the Robotics, Automation, and Dance (RAD) Lab, discusses her interdisciplinary work bridging robotics and performing arts. She explains how her senior thesis on the 'unrideable bicycle' and choreographer Twila Tharp’s concepts of stability led to her current research on creating large datasets of annotated human movement for AI. LaViers also details the operational challenges of live performance robotics, where equipment failure is not an option, and describes her iterative, experimental approach to choreographing with non-humanoid machines like the HAL robot and piezo robots.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
AE Machines, Boston Dynamics
Products
HAL robot
Also
Robotics, Automation, and Dance Lab, Twila Tharp, Penn State, University of Illinois, Chicago, National Science Foundation

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