A Robotic Comedian: Stand-up comedy performance from a humanoid robot
Publications
Kleomenis Katevas, Patrick G.T. Healey and Matthew Tobias Harris, "Robot Comedy Lab: Experimenting with the Social Dynamics of Live Performance", Frontiers in Psychology 6:1253. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01253.
[pdf, web]
Kleomenis Katevas, Patrick G.T. Healey and Matthew Tobias Harris, "Robot Stand-up: Engineering a Comic Performance" in Proceedings of the 2014 Workshop on Humanoid Robots and Creativity at the 2014 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2014), Madrid, Spain, November 2014.
[pdf, source code]
Press Coverage
This project was featured on the following on-line magazines and websites:
- New Scientist: Robot comedian stands up well against human rivals
- Queen Mary University of London: Comedy robot metal tested at the Barbican
- Chortle: Rise of the Robocomics - The machines performing stand-up
- London Evening Standard: Scientists create robot to take on comedians in stand-up challenge
- The New Yorker: A Robot Walks Into a Bar...
- Phys.org: Robot does standup for London audience
- The Huffington Post: Comedy Robot Video: Researchers Program 'RoboThespian' To Perform Stand-Up Comedy & Gauge Crowd
- CNET: RoboThespian tests its mettle as stand-up comic
Ph.D. student Toby Harris won the 1st prize in a national photo competition with a picture of RoboThespian performing stand-up comedy live on-stage:
Pictures from ComedyLab: "Human vs. Robot" show.
