Development and Implementation: The development process started with the song that Gaga was to perform while playing the robot piano. According to andyRobot, “We used the song itself. Once [Gaga] had the music done, we timed the robots by animating them with the music and synchronizing them to move in perfect unison. We use inverse kinematics -- that's the basis of the skeletal system for any human or animal. For example, if you reach and grab your wrist, your hand moves your arm. You're not thinking about how your shoulder moves or your elbow bends, you're thinking about where your hand is going. We used that system to make the keyboard the parent of the two robots. We were able to animate the keyboard in the computer program and move it around and both robots calculated their own skeletal system motions to follow the parent's movements. [4]”

Despite the meticulous planning and design, the robotic team ran into a problem during rehearsals. andyRobot contacted a colleague at NASA, Brian Lim, head of JPL's Planetary Landing Testbed initiative. According to Lim, “Because the robot positioning was extremely precise, slight misalignment for any reason could generate extremely high and undesirable loads. The model keyboard andyRobot used for programming the robot was significantly softer and lighter than the actual keyboard used on the stage. So, when the final keyboard came in, it had more complex movements that caused the robots to fight each other, resulting in load errors that did not appear with the softer model of the keyboard. [4]” Lim continues, “In the short time that they had to fix the problem, I suggested adding "squishiness" with a thin piece of rubber that gave some compliance between the robots and the keyboard. This allowed the robots just enough give and allowed them to work together without screaming, "Error!"”

andyRobot highlights the challenges and intense preparations required to work in an environment like the Grammy Awards. “It's heart-stopping. Plans go out the window when you have one band unloading and the next loading in. One is performing on left; the other is loading in on the right. Typically, loading at concerts takes hours. It's very tedious and precarious. We had checklists just like a pilot does in an airplane. And if we had problems we had disaster recovery plans in place.”