9/21/2016 Mike Koon, Marketing and Communications Coordinator
As the new season of Dancing with the Stars kicks off this month, Venanzio Cichella and Hyung Jin Yoon have a unique group of dance students. The mechanical science and engineering PhD students are teaching drones how to tango. Cichella will be among about two-dozen exhibitors at a tech demo as part of the Pygmalion Festival. The demo runs from 4:30-9:30 pm on Thursday, Sept. 22 at the Krannert Center of the Performing Arts.
Written by Mike Koon, Marketing and Communications Coordinator
His demonstration is also interactive. Besides being able to watch drones move to the beat of the tango, the public is invited to draw on a tablet and see drones transpose the drawing in the air via lights. To do so, mathematical tools called Bezier curves combine points to make a smooth path, which can then be followed by the vehicle. As part of the demo, a long exposure camera will produce a photograph of the subsequent signature in the air.
Of course there is a serious side to all the drone frivolity. Cichella is part of Professor Naira Hovakimyan’s research group, which is taking drone technology to a whole different sophisticated level.
For starters, the group is developing technology that will enable drones to do remedial tasks for the elderly, such as autonomously delivering a pill, find the remote control or shut off a stove that has been left on. That may involve ground robots for closer interaction with its master.
“We are working on a more general implementation, which will later allow us to deliver a more wide range of performance depending on what is required,” Cichella said. “This project involves a number of disciplines such an interface that makes it easier to command this robotic system. We are also working with a psychology research group in order to control these drones to a degree that they are perceived as trustworthy.”
Thanks to the group’s work, someday drones will be used for surveillance to help firefighters find burning embers or rescuers find survivors in a building following a disaster. They are building drones that are nimble, but also strong enough to carry a large payload.
“Through our algorithms, we will enable drones to cooperatively act in a safe way,” Cichella explained. “Once you have the capability of moving many of these in an area, we will develop hardware such as thermal and motion sensors to do the job.”
For years, Hovakimyan has used her mathematical skills to develop flight control systems. Likewise her group’s application to drones began in the theoretical, developing and using mathematical tools to prove the stability of the drone and prove that they can converge to a desired position and be able to detect obstacles in their environment.
“After the theoretical, our goal is to implement the technology in an optimal way through a given architecture,” Cichella said.
Cichella’s ability to program the drones to dance to tango combines his career path with his interest in music and art.
“I hope that as I get excited with this combination, other students will as well,” Cichella said. “I like that what drives you to the objective is something that is funny rather than having a well defined practical objective. In this case, show drones moving like people do when they dance in the engineering version of dancing tango.”
So how does it work?
Cichella has developed software that plays the music and “prints” the wave of the song. While the geometrical path is predefined, the music affects the speed at which these drones move along the path, in order to coordinate with each other and with the music itself.
Cichella added, “Our objective for the Pygmalion demo is to show that science can be fun while still giving our audience the understanding of what’s behind it.”