How do you think this quadcopter feels?   You don’t speak the
language of dogs and yet you can tell when one is angry,
excited, or down in the dumps. How does that work, and can it be
replicated by a robot? That’s the question which [Megha Sharma]
set out to study as part of her graduate research at the
University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.  The experiment starts by
training the robot in a series of patterns meant to mimic
emotion. How, you might ask? Apparently you hire an actor
trained in Laban Movement. This is a method of describing and
dealing with how the human body moves. It’s no surprise that the
technique is included in the arsenal of some actors. The
training phase uses stationary cameras (kind of like those
acrobatic quadcopter projects) to record the device as it is
moved by the actor.  Phase two of the experiment involves
playing back the recorded motion with the quadcopter under its
own power. A human test subject watches each performance and is
asked to describe how the quadcopter feels. The surp