Dancing Robot Swan Triggers Emotional response

The Dying Swan is sometimes moving smoothly and gently, sometimes in a dramatic and fiery manner, as Tchaikovsky's majestic music from the ballet Swan Lake is playing.

Yet this is no ordinary ballet , but a robot in the form of a swan, created at Malardalen University and choreographed by professional dancer Asa Unander-Scharin.

The swan robot's just over four-minute-long dance has so far been seen only by a select few. Nonetheless, it has already made a big impression. Tearful eyes and words like "touching", "fascinating" and "beautiful" are some of the reactions.

- We want to explore the limits of what a robot can do, what human expressions it can mimic, and how it affects people's perception of the robot when it makes an appearance in art and dance, says Lars Asplund, Professor of Computer Science at Malardalen University in Vasteras, Sweden.

His research field is robotics and he has designed the approximately one-metre-tall dancing swan on the basis of a robot that was previously a student's degree project. The robot was built by a modular system and in the white wings, neck, beak and feet there are a total of 19 different joints, which makes it very flexible.

The idea for the dancing robot was hatched jointly by Lars Asplund and his colleague Kerstin Gauffin, who works with theatre at Malardalen University.

- With our swan we are showing that we can use robots in new ways - simply because they are beautiful and give the audience new experiences, says Kerstin Gauffin, who wants to see robots appear on stages along with "ordinary" actors.