Created by the team of engineers, designers, coders, researchers and storytellers at Gentle Systems, Otto, as the name suggests is the reference to the work of Frei Otto, a German architect and structural engineer known for this work in using soap to explore lightweight, tensile structures. Here, Otto is comprised of two KUKA Agilus KR6 robots, and a series of tools to allow the team to explore surface tension of the soap bubbles.

For this project, they used Maya to choreograph the robots, iterating and refining the movements. To work with this fragile material, they carefully designed their setup, keeping the room’s humidity constant to avoid as many variables as possible. They built “end effectors,” that the robots could use without breaking the surface tension of the soap, controlled airflows and speeds (with Controllino board), and even created a custom soap formula that would suit the process.

It was a constant push and pull between controlling the material and letting it do what it wanted. Soap is not something you can fully tame. You work with its tensions—surface tension, the tension of time, the tension of fragility—and you try to coax beauty out of it.

The end result are 3 choreographies, one where two soap surfaces are transformed into a single large floating bubble, two where robots compete over a single bubble–only to discover they could create a wealth of bubbles by working together. Finally, three, begins with a soap sheet being unfolded, then punctured to create a hole, to then end with bubbles being blown through it. Perhaps the most technically challenging of the three choreographies, this sequence demanded precise motion control and synchrony to create this effect—a void in a soap surface.

Project Page | Gentle Systems

Credits: Haw-Lin Services (Video), Services United (Production), perDU (Post Production Video) and Robert Wisniewski (DOP).