As part of the project 'Dramaturgy for Devices', we are investigating whether testing robots in an enacted social setting helps us explore social robot behaviour. Rather than using predefined movements, we leverage artists' expertise in translating internal states to expressive, physical motion. To enable full expressive control over the robot and explore new puppeteer strategies, control needs to be reconfigurable; a feature often missing in existing control systems for theatrical robots, fixing the mapping between controller and actuator.
This paper presents a modular, routing-based mapping system built in TouchDesigner that enables puppeteers across varying skill levels to design, explore, and reconfigure arbitrary control strategies for robotic motion rigs.
