Deep Dive: Catie Cuan on Dancing and Living With Robots

In the third installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with Dr. Catie Cuan, robot choreographer and former artist in residence at Everyday Robots, for a conversation about how dance can be used to build beautiful and useful robots that people want to be around.

Watch the video to hear how Catie and the Everyday Robots team transformed robotic motion into music, what it feels like when she’s dancing with a robot and why she’s “hyper-optimistic” about the future of robotics.

For more, check out Catie on Episode 5 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Living With Robots”: youtube.com/watch?v=aUcB73KgEVs

00:00 - Introduction
00:29 - Catie’s mission to make robots more humanistic and whimsical
02:12 - How Catie came to X and Everyday Robots
03:40 - Using dance to make robots less “robotic”
07:38 - Teaching robots human social cues
11:00 - Transforming robotic motion into sound with “music mode”
15:16 - Programming robots to “flock” together like animals
18:31 - How young kids interact with robots
20:15 - Catie’s own experience interacting with her robots
22:18 - Working with experts outside the field
24:36 - Designing robots to not look like “robots”
28:44 - Helping humanity face their visceral fear of robots
32:40 - The moonshot and legacy of Everyday Robots
35:42 - Catie’s advice for moonshot-takers
37:27 - Catie’s vision for what the future looks like

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