This installation invites visitors to engage with a flock of robots that respond naturally to human movement. We reimagine human-robot interaction beyond typical task-based scenarios, creating an environment where robots move expressively as social agents.

The flocking behavior is inspired by the Boids program, which outlines simple rules for agent motion that result in emergent bird-like flocking, and extends the original model to enable goal-seeking and human-following. Human participants can conduct the flock with gestures to trigger responses in choreography, light, and sound. Each degree of freedom on the robots is mapped to a distinct musical sound, allowing the flock's motion to be heard in addition to being seen. LED dome lights mounted on the robots shift colors to indicate recognition of human presence and gestures.

The project was first developed by Catie Cuan at Everyday Robots; we worked together to recreate it on Stretch robots for display at the grand opening of the Stanford Robotics Center, with support from Hello Robot.

A human leads four robots around the space. Raising the left arm triggers a robot pirouette (0:20) and crouching down to the ground pauses the motion of the robot bases (0:30).

Six robots flock in two circles. Raising the right arm results a clapping motion of the robot grippers (0:13) and a “T” gesture causes the robots to mimic the human by extending their arms (0:19).

Stanford Robotics Center
Stanford, CA