The performance in June during the Movement, Music, and Brain Health NSF AccelNet meeting at UMBC was the brainchild of three UMBC faculty who have joined forces to explore whether and how dancing robots might offer humans new tools to improve their mental health. The research piggybacks off established practices of human-to-human dance/movement therapy, which can be used to treat some mental health challenges, such as schizophrenia, anxiety and depression. 

The form that robotic dance therapy might take, and the range of mental health conditions it could treat, are still large open-ended questions for the team, which includes UMBC faculty Ramana Vinjamuri (CSEE), Andrea Kleinsmith (IS), and Ann Sofie Clemmensen (Dance).

Read more about this project in this article on UMBC News.