An engineering student from the University of Porto has designed a fully autonomous robot that can ‘dance’ in an intelligent way.

The inventor, João Oliveira, who is studying Integrated Electrical Engineering, produced the unit with components from Lego NXT.  He then took the software concept behind robotic soccer (which the school is a prominent ‘player’ in) and took it one step further.

Using algorithms, Oliveira managed to ‘match’ movement to the rhythm in music via intelligent ‘hearing’. The robot can also respond to colours (for example changes in colour on the dance floor).

Oliveira explained how the project works and its originality, Oliveira said: “[It  works] by presenting an application and a modular interface that allows some flexibility and interaction from the user on the behaviour of the robot, defining the movement that it should express home set of stimuli”.

The next step, the inventor says, is to creat a level of choreography between different units.

Taken from LatestEngineeringNews.