How Cobots Helped OK Go Build their Latest Music Video

OK Go have built a reputation for music videos that test the limits of what’s technically possible. 

For the band’s latest single, Love, they teamed up with collaborative robots, known as cobots, to create their most complex video to date.

Shot in one take, powered by 25 robotic arms and based entirely around moving mirrors and infinite reflections, the video is a four-minute display of machine-assisted choreography.

Filmed at a train station in Budapest, the project involves more than 60 people from 10 countries, all working to capture one uninterrupted shot.

The central idea is simple in theory but difficult in execution: use mirrors to represent the multiplying, endless nature of love. 

However, those mirrors don’t just hang in place. They move with the music, shifting shape and position in sync with the beat. For that kind of control, only robots will do.

The perfect match

Miguel Espada, Co-Director of the project alongside OK Go’s frontman Damian Kulash and Creative Director Aaron Duffy, say the reflections at the heart of the concept had to be exact: “To achieve an infinite reflection, a reflection of a reflection of a reflection, it’s enough to place one mirror in front of another.

"But if those two mirrors aren’t perfectly parallel, the reflections curve and ruin the illusion,” he says.

Using analogue techniques to set the mirrors manually wouldn’t provide the precision needed.

Miguel explains: “We also wanted the effects to be dynamic. The mirrors needed to move and change shape. Robots were clearly the best choice.”

The idea to use robotic arms was already in motion when Miguel joined the project. Workshops in Los Angeles and Barcelona helped the team understand how to pair cobots with mirrors. That’s when Universal Robots came into the picture.

Miguel had already worked with the Danish company’s cobots on other creative projects.

“For me, choosing UR robots was a no-brainer. I’ve worked on several projects with them over the years and know their versatility and ease of use very well,” he adds.

When he showed OK Go what they could do, they were convinced.

The robots were programmed using UR’s real-time control protocol (RTDE) and synced to the track’s tempo, which is set at 78 beats per minute. That meant rewriting the team’s software to run at a BPM rather than traditional frames per second.

“We reprogrammed our control software to work at the same BPM as the song,” Miguel adds. The code had two layers — one in Python to launch around 30 separate threads for the robot arms and another in C++ to handle the animations through OpenFrameworks.

From music videos to warehouse logistics

While the OK Go video highlights the creative potential of cobots, the same precision, flexibility and safety features are proving equally useful in the supply chain and warehousing sectors.

Universal Robots’ technology is widely deployed in logistics operations worldwide, where it tackles hard-to-fill roles and supports warehouse throughput during peak periods.

In distribution centres, cobots handle repetitive tasks such as pallet building, box erecting and case picking. These are physically taxing jobs that often result in injury or fatigue.

Cobots help reduce strain by taking on the heavy lifting, allowing human workers to shift towards higher-level roles that involve planning or quality control.

In retail warehousing, for example, cobots excel at loading and unloading a wide variety of product types and packaging formats.

Mixed-pallet building, carton handling and order picking are all common tasks where cobots outperform traditional automation due to their adaptability. With mounting pressure to meet delivery deadlines and handle order fluctuations, cobots offer a scalable solution that can be redeployed between tasks with minimal downtime.

The UR10e model, Universal Robots’ most popular cobot, now supports 25% more payload capacity without a price increase. With a 1300mm reach and a compact footprint, it enables businesses to move heavier parts, install more advanced tooling and streamline palletising without reconfiguring entire workspaces.

In third-party logistics (3PL), the need to adapt rapidly to different client requirements is constant. Cobots meet this need with ease. They can be programmed in-house, switched between applications and quickly retooled between product lines. This versatility helps logistics firms control costs while maintaining service levels, even during seasonal peaks.

Health and safety are also critical in warehouse environments. Universal Robots cobots include 17 configurable safety protocols, allowing teams to work side by side with robotic systems in tight spaces without compromising compliance or wellbeing. With overexertion and repetitive motion responsible for a large portion of injuries in warehouse work, these systems help prevent workplace harm while maintaining productivity.

Teaching cobots the choreography of love

One major advantage of using cobots is how easy they are to operate on set.

“Within minutes, I was able to teach the entire team how to use the ‘teach mode,’ so everyone could move the robots by hand and teach them positions and paths,” Miguel explains.

Even Damian, the band’s frontman, got stuck in. “When Damian wanted to move a robot he always asked, ‘Enable the touchy-touchy mode.’”

Aside from being easy to programme, Universal Robots’ arms are also built with safety in mind. That was essential for this production.

“Combining robots, mirrors and people is potentially dangerous, and Universal Robots are built to the highest safety standards,” Miguel says. With narrow spaces, fast camera moves and people crossing in and out of frame, the cobots needed to move precisely without risking injury.

Safety wasn’t the only challenge. Timing had to be perfect across scenes. “There’s a scene where a kaleidoscope forms around Damian’s head. It looks simple, but it shows just how complex the setup was behind the scenes,” he adds.

Getting the mirrors to align at the exact moment Damian moved into place, while leaving space for the camera and art crew, was like solving a physical puzzle.

The video was only completed after 39 takes. Each test revealed new variables. The animatic (the video plan) was detailed, but adjustments were constant. Even the transitions between scenes had to be adjusted in real time.

And then there were moments of discovery. A human choreographer helped with one scene, only for the team to realise that cobots don’t move like people. “It wasn’t a limitation,” Miguel explains. “It just required an iterative process to explore the expressive potential of the robots.”

By the time take 39 came around, everything had finally clicked. The robots moved on cue, the band hit their marks and the illusion of infinite reflections stayed intact. 

While the final result is a seamless visual, getting there meant overcoming unpredictable problems with an adaptable toolkit.

In this case, that toolkit included Python scripts, safety-rated cobots and the human creativity to bridge art and automation.

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