Music-driven robot swarm creates collaborative light art with humans

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have created an innovative system that enables humans to collaborate with a swarm of small wheeled robots to produce dynamic visual art inspired by music. The platform integrates swarm robotics, music analysis, and human interaction to translate musical features—such as tempo and chord progression—into coordinated robot movements that emit colored light trails on a floor canvas. These trails act like brushstrokes, collectively forming evolving light paintings that reflect the emotional essence of the music. A camera captures the robots’ motion to create a unified visual composition, while human participants can influence aspects like trail width and placement, fostering a shared creative process without overriding the robots’ behavior. The robots convey emotion through variables including light color, brightness, trail width, speed, and spatial positioning, all dynamically adjusted in response to changes in the music. Developing the control algorithm to manage multiple robots in a confined space was a key challenge, with successful tests involving up to 12 robots and potential scalability to larger swarms. Beyond artistic applications