I-Care-Us

I-Care-Us by Fernando Nabais and Stephan Jürgens is a digital live performance for flying robot and human performers premiered in 2014. The flying robot performers are re-programmed Parrot AR.Drone 2 quadrotors (helicopters with four helices), which engage in an inter-species dialogue by means of custom-developed software solutions and alternative shell design. We have developed a stand-alone application, written by our programmer Sandro Fioravanti in the scientific programing environment LabView, which allows us to use sensorial data and video streams to elaborate the interaction design for the performance. Unlike the popular mobile device applications, our software is not limited to flight control functionality, simple image streaming and recording tools or flight animations. Instead, the focus here is the design of (social) interaction skills, thus enabling the flying robot to display (semi-) autonomous behaviors in its performance environment.