This thesis designs, implements, and experimentally evaluates a multimodal control interface for robotic operation in theatrical contexts. Building on a preceding academic project (literature review and architectural proposal), the work advances to a research-grade prototype and empirical evaluation. The prototype integrates multiple input modalities in a layered architecture that applies puppetry principles before trajectory generation.
A social robot with head and upper-body degrees of freedom from RaM department serves as the platform. A controlled comparative experiment tests the multimodal interface against a conventional joystick baseline on three theatrical tasks: a scripted synchronisation task, an expressive portrayal task, and a reactive improvisation task.
Evaluation covers technical performance (task completion time, error rate, motion accuracy, ue-response latency), operator workload, usability, and perceived artistic quality assessed by domain-expert observers.
