  Robot animation is a new form of character animation that extends the
traditional process by allowing the animated motion to become more interactive
and adaptable during interaction with users in real-world settings. This paper
reviews how this new type of character animation has evolved and been shaped
from character animation principles and practices. We outline some new
paradigms that aim at allowing character animators to become robot animators,
and to properly take part in the development of social robots. One such
paradigm consists of the 12 principles of robot animation, which describes
general concepts that both animators and robot developers should consider in
order to properly understand each other. We also introduce the concept of
Kinematronics, for specifying the controllable and programmable expressive
abilities of robots, and the Nutty Workflow and Pipeline. The Nutty Pipeline
introduces the concept of the Programmable Robot Animation Engine, which allows
to generate, compose and blend various types of animation sources into a final,
interaction-enabled motion that can be rendered on robots in real-time during
real-world interactions. The Nutty Motion Filter is described and exemplified
as a technique that allows an open-loop motion controller to apply physical
limits to the motion while still allowing to tweak the shape and expressivity
of the resulting motion. Additionally, we describe some types of tools that can
be developed and integrated into Nutty-based workflows and pipelines, which
allow animation artists to perform an integral part of the expressive behaviour
development within social robots, and thus to evolve from standard (3D)
character animators, towards a full-stack type of robot animators.
