After months of design and construction between myself & Mike Vance, we’ve designed and created a machine we never thought possible…..A robotic musician which can interact with human players. Our Intelligent Robotic Percussion system was presented at the Engineering Design Presentations at the NRC research facility this past Friday. Our system had never been operational until 9 hours before the presentation, we were a hair’s breadth away and ready to finally give up….
Below are the first live tests of robot 1.0 (Duncan Storey on Guitar):
Most musical robots systems focus simply on sound production (Mechanically reproducing a set of static instructions) and rarely address perceptual aspects of musicianship, such as listening, analysis, improvisation, or modification of human input. Our project aims to create a device that “listens” to a human player and responds dynamically.
We designed this (robotic drummer) system as educational and research device which makes use of interdisciplinary collaboration (Drawing from music, computer science, engineering and cognitive psychology)
Below is another video outlining some of the capabilities of this drumming robot:
Brit Cruise 