In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, events around the world have either been canceled or postponed indefinitely. Our clients who usually host an annual show for E3 (Electronics Entertainment Expo) had to think quickly to find an innovative way to continue with their plans while adhering to public health policy of social distancing this year.
As in-person interaction and non-essential travel have been highly suggested against by state law, it became difficult and near impossible to have guests on set. We had to think of another way for our clients to be able to continue with their show which involved inviting guests, such as game producers, from across the globe onto their show to talk about their projects.
Together, we came up with a unique method of “hosting” our guests. As work-from-home became more common, people have become familiar with Zoom calls and video conferences. We took these digital personas and gave them a surrogate body to inhabit. So we built a robot.
This is Surrogate Bot
Surrogate Bot was designed so that we could still invite guests onto the show without them actually being there. The guests can call in and inhabit surrogate bot and interact with our host just like they would if they were really there… sort of.
Surrogate Bot’s face was designed to display the caller’s video stream so that our guests could still have a presence on the show. Through some clever video editing and a little bit of acting, we were able to convince viewers that our guests were actually able to control Surrogate Bot.
In reality, a technician was remotely controlling Surrogate Bot from behind the scenes with a modified Playstation controller.
We programmed Surrogate Bot with a few custom gestures based on the client’s request. Gestures featured waving “hello,” placing its hands on it’s hips, and, our personal favorite, “crazy arms.”
But crazy arms wouldn’t be possible without functional arms. We spent some time studying the motions of anthropomorphic arms to create the most convincing movements we could. Heavy-duty servos were used to animate the gestures which were then programmed to execute the custom functions that Surrogate Bot became so well known for.
Another feature we implemented to humanize Surrogate Bot was to inject some dialogue while he was on screen. With some voice acting and script we were able to give Surrogate Bot a personality that the audience could connect with.
