Slashdot Mirror
Humanoid Robot Conducts Beethoven Symphony
me98411 writes "New Scientist is running a front page article about the Sony's QRIO bot [QRIO= Quest for Curiosity] successfully conducted an entire orchestra at the Tokyo Philharmonic Society. An impressive footage of the four bots performing a dance routine can be seen here [wmv format]"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
On my hotsex fembot... Not that I really need one per say....
Right, with all the grace of a metronome.
Lets hope Sony has designed "The Three Laws of Robotics" into these little bots.
Surely this would stop them from forming their own boy bands, or should I say Robo Bands.....
"Back street roboz"
I would expect them to make the first music 'bot sing "....Marvin, I love you"
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
That's nothing. I've seen an entire orchestra of automatons (automata?) at "The House on the Rock" in Wisconsin. You put a quarter in a slot, and the life-size orchestra plays for a while.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Heh. Just kidding.
I gotta admit though, that thing is pretty cute.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Donald Duck has be conducting orchestras since the 1950s.
1. A robot may not injure a Beatle, or, through inaction, allow a Beatle to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by roadies except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not mean playing in a rap band.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Tap
<buffering....>
Tap
<buffering....>
Tap
<buffering....>
and so on.
It's not like it's performing gymnastics.
What, if any, development companies in the US are working on robots? It seems like all of the news is about sony, honda, and toyota developing these things. Someone here needs to step up or we'll be left out of the market.
Those little bastards dance better than I do...
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
QRIO= Quest for Curiosity
What? How? Maybe I'm ignorant, or maybe this is off-topic. Kinda threw me though.
I think humans can do better "the robot" dance than QRIO can do human dance... So 1 point to humans... but in ohter hand, don't think much of us here at ./ can dance, so lets give QRIO 1 point too..
This just isn't impressive. At least not any more than a robot that puts a car together. It's just assigning a task and pressing play. Could it figure out what to do if the music was off because someone messed up or would it just keep right on until it finished? That might be a little more impressive because it'd have to recognize a series of notes and timing.
Leave it up to the Japanese to have the robots dancing. Bubble gum culture at it's finest.
i would probably be out of a job
but at least i would have a life.....
unless an electrical appliance could give her more pleasure than i can......
at least i would still have kids.....
unless they found out i diddnt have a job.
damn next thing you know were theyre going to take over the world.... everyone destroy all robots, destroy your television, DOWN WITH TECHNOLOGY... UP WITH IMCOMPENTANCE AND IMPERFECTION
Domo arigato, Conductor Roboto.
Not to say that this isn't a small achievement - I'll respect any company that can build a metre tall robot with fully articulated limbs and fingers, a robot that can break dance, throw a ball, anything like that. These are all goals homebrew robot builders could only imagine in their dreams.
But if Sony is commited to using these robots as assistants for the elderly, or even be able to walk my dog, it needs a brain.
I'm not talking about AI here; The'll need to be able to recognize faces, respond to commands, and do daily autonomous tasks (water a house plant, feed the cat, get the paper), at least as well enough to pass a Turing-like test to be useful.
So far, the only thing I've seen the QIRO do is dance. Once they demonstrate some functionality, I'll be intrested. Now it's just a toy.
Who thought of this? Don't you geeks realize that we're not getting the chicks as it is because we can't dance and then you go invent a robot that dances better than us. You know you're not going to be able to send this robot to a nightclub to pick 'em up for you.
Jeepers.
How about inventing a robot that beats up jocks instead?
On the other hand I'd love to see this robot take on a Dance Dance Revolution machine.
John.
Dance better than I do! Crap!! I'll be extra impressed when the robots can do DDR. http://www.ddrfreak.com/
I just sent in my application to conducting school. By the time I graduate, all the conducting jobs will be outsourced to robots. Oh well, I guess we should have all seen it coming, much like what happend to assembly and manufacturing plants in the 80s.
Hi. I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such classical music meets robotics films as "The 500 Diodes of Dr T" and "Metal Maestro: The Amazing Story of Ludwig Von Boilerplate"
I saw this a long time ago. Where did I find it?
Slashdot. This is a dupe from over a month ago.
I would love to see the bot conducting an entire orchestra at the Tokyo Philharmonic Society. Here is a photograph.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
the video, or the fact that it still loaded for me near instantly a full 20 minutes after it was posted to slash
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Now where is my Rock Man and Gundam!?
I'll be impressed when robots like these can demonstrate Aikido: at the least, they should take ukemi (falls) gracefully and come out dancing. When I can throw it across the room and it can "walk the walk" we will have droids capable of autonomous operation.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
""New Scientist is running a front page article about the Sony's QRIO bot [QRIO= Quest for Curiosity] successfully conducted an entire orchestra at the Tokyo Philharmonic Society."
How is this different from, say, a metronome?
This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen.
--
Will work for bandwidth.
No, old news is the piano-playing robot Maestro in "Big 'O'"
And a 01 and a 10 and a 11....
Oh, for mod points. Thanks for a great laugh!
Windows? Rinux? I think they have this story on Srashdot.jp
As a conductor, I get endlessly annoyed by people who think that I simply wave my arms about while a group of people watch me and react. Conducting (good conducting, at least) requires two-way communication between the conductor and the ensemble. If a conductor (human or otherwise) is not listening and reacting to what the players/singers are doing, they are not conducting... they are simply beating time -- therefore, I reject the notion that this robot is 'conducting.'
To me this seems like little more than a parlor trick and it is no more (or less) impressive to me than someone teaching their TRS-80 to play TIC-TAC-TOE. I will be impressed when someone devises AI that can phrase, balance and make decisions based on intuition, instinct and the emotion of a musical moment, and then builds it into a robot that can reproduce a full range of gestures and facial expressions.
This is a very bad application of robot technology. A musical director has to have a lot of temper, or the musicians won't respect him and follow him. Plus there are a lot of other things that he has to be good at, some of which I don't think can be implemented in software. Too many variables.
Having a human director conduct an orchestra of robots wouldn't be good, either; the musicians have to feel the music and infuse some passion into the execution, something I doubt can be simulated with a robot.
Wasn't the whole idea of having robots to put them to work in incredibly boring and repetitive tasks so that humans could concentrate on some more, well, human tasks, like art? What's the point of a robot conducting an orchestra, allowing human directors to go work at a production line?
Go hug some trees.
It's both fascinating and scary to watch how precisely and accurate robots can move nowadays.
But what will happen in a few years when the military develops an army of robots?
Imagine a dead accurate killer robot that follows all orders blindly and never misses a single bullet.
--
Will work for bandwidth.
So when can I get a team of these to write our company's mission critical software for me? Then I wouldn't have to pay these pesky overpaid engineers at all. They're so unpredictable.
What I'm really looking forward to is when I can get a team of Indian made robots to write the code for me. Then it'll be predictable AND cheap.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
And what about conducting non-professional groups? It needs to be able to respond dynamically to the tempo itself if the group start's to drag. It'll have to be able to show the pissed off look to when I miss a note too...
and seems a bit of a scenester. I mean come on, conducting orchestras, playing golf...can't i find a queerbot that just like coffee and conversation???! I mean with all the videos and pictures there's prolly a paris hilton style video on the way. Besides, though that one hour battery life is well above average for non-drug-using gay boys...it just wont satisfy my needs.
All your preview button are belong to Hello Kitty.
Does Kyooryo come close to anything meaningful in Japanese?
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
QRIO is not for sale, it is one of many fruits of long term robotics research.
Are you against that?
You have to walk before you can run.
(From the technolgy page)
...a single stem might not get it, but a dozen might ;-)
"It can adjust to disparities in elevation up to 1 cm, and slopes up to 10 degrees"
The ability to shift weight to stand on one 'foot' impresses the (*^%* out of me!
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code...
Obviously you've never played in an orchestra. The conductor by far is the most important person out there, from your high school orchestra to the Vienna Philharmonic. The problem with your theory is that every musician has a different theory as to how a piece should sound. Try buying a few CDs of the same concerto played by different people. They are entirely different in all ways except the notes. The conductor is there to make sure all the musicians are playing the same version of the piece, not their own personal rendition of it.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
I'm looking at that video of the robots dancing, and the farther it runs, the more I'm thinking it's CG. The lighting doesn't look quite right on the robots' skins and there's some fuzz where they interact with the background.
It could just be the poor quality of the video, but I'm dubious.
___ alwaysBETA.com - Hey, you've got nothing better to do.
My immediate reaction was that it was CGI movie fakery. In fact, many moviegoers think the "perfect" motion of CGI objects is not merely unrealistic but also physically impossible.
Watch this footage, and think again.
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
What a great PR stunt. Anyone who has ever played in a professional ensemble knows that a rehearsed orchestra can conduct itself almost flawlessly.
_nfotxn
Man, mwv really sucks
.gog allgorhythm for encoding ALL off my 240 GB cr4cked war3z mp3z.
i allwayz and only use the
Just my 2 sense.
My parents were both distiguished concert players and they're opinion on the matter was that the conductor really only mattered in rehersal.
Once they were playing in the performance, they really didn't notice him unless they needed to keep time for a long long rest.
In that context, your comments about the conductor are valid but really don't disprove your parents point.
To get a feeling about how important a conductor is during the performance, just imagine what would happen if the conductor tried to change something funidmental! He could only count on part of his symphony paying attention, so only pieces of it would do realize what he was trying to do.
I haven't been following the dancing robots much, but now that I've seen it, I gotta say, it is somewhat impressive. The movements and balance involved have come a long way, it looks like they acheive it with some efficiency.
I'm a little disappointed, though- no Robot Dance? I guess the break dancing robot is a little ways away.
J
on the sound recordings under Section 102 (a) 7, or is that impossible because only a human's conducting would qualify?
Lenz Blog
Sorry, but it's already been determined that it will sing "Daisy".
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
...but it's dying. You may as well paint a start button on your can because you're going to have to get used to seeing it.
No, the orchestra vid I didn't find that impressive, but I'll agree with the poster above, the dance vid was quite astonishing.
Just to point out, the level of articulation those little bots have is a huge advancement
beyond where we were capable even five years ago.
As someone who enjoys his Science with a teaspoon of Cognition, I'd like to point out that the ability for those robots to move about so swiftly without falling over is a lot more difficult then we meatbags appreciate.
why not replace the musicians with robots? while you're at it, might as well replace the instruments with recorded machines..
oh what the heck. an ipod would rule them all. conductor included.
"I know kung-fu" -Neo, The Matrix
Does life imitate art or visa versa?
GUYS!! They're not trying to make a robot conductor, OR a robot artist. They are simply trying to demonstrate the physical abilities of their robot in a clever way, i.e. having something cold and mechanical do something we normally think of as artistic.
Yes, in this case it's basically a high-tech metronome, but there's a reason only rich mega-corporations make these things: because they're exponentially more complex than a metronome.
Get off your high-horses, you Aasimov-worshipping, Matrix-watching, cosplay-wearing, Yoda-quoting, Jolt-drinking, computer-interfacing GEEKS!!!
... to build and maintain those robots!
(simpsons writers had it right)
I think this is more of a statement about how easy a conductor's job is rather than how far robotics have progressed.
but unlike other robots, the QRIO can actually run. And dance which some people consider gymnastics!
Slashdot is at the blazing from of news.. this is an OLD story!!!
Your right in one sense but like another poster mentioned.. Each venue is different, which means different acoustics, which means different sections may have to play quieter, louder, etc. Alot of the pieces orchestra's play are complex as well and even tho they are skilled muscians they may still need direction. Some sections may be rushing or dragging the piece along... There are many things you need a conductor for, otherwise you wouldn't see conductors during performances. They'd be like any other stage production, watching from the sidelines and appear at the end for a bow and some flowers. I haven't played in a concert band in ages but you do watch the conductor and follow him/her. Thats what I recall anyways.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
No no no - you might go down, but you can go up again. Just post something that you're fairly certain that won't get modded down. Remember, you don't get Karma for being modded Funny.
Just post early, say something interesting and try not to make too many errors. You will get modded up -> Instant Karma!
It is fake
that slashdot just SUCKS ASS
Does anybody else think this is too freaky? I mean, these little buggers look like those scary stop-motion things from puppet-master, except they move on their own and look creepishly real. I don't like it. No sir. This is like the model T-2 from cyberdyne industries.
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
What's really impressive about this is that despite the normal effects of Slashdot, I still got over 300kb/s off that direct video link!
I really don't understand why people are unimpressed with the dancing robots. Even if theyre programmed to do the dance routine, its still damn impressive. I'm not sure how familiar people are with bipedal movement, but its not as simple as you think; it takes a fairly complex series of motions to keep you balanced as you move, especially when walking or running. One thing you'll notice with the robots is that that balance every motion: this is not an easy feat, especially with the relative smoothness with which they are moving around. So once more, getting robots to do robotic things is easy (robotic arm that welds stuff), where as getting a robot to mimic life (bipedal walking around) and people is most definitely difficult, forget whatever you've seen in Hollywood.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
I usually piss right after I shit, but there's a delay just long enough for the water to splash up and wash my anus. At least in Japan they have those specialized toilets with water jets to spray your ass with clean, purified water.
I think you are much more suited to play the skin flute.
I can easily believe a robot conducting like a human. After all, I've seen many humans conducting whom I felt looked a lot like robots..
f u cn rd ths, u r prbbly a lsy spllr.
Whatever server and pipe they have, they need to donate it to Slashdot so we can, in turn, donate it to the sites that get farked! 300k from JAPAN?
It's a preview of tomorrow, my friends.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I stuck a robot up my pussy.
I now predict SKYNET will swoop in with Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries booming forth.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't think robots conducting or generating music is as interesting as a single brain playing every instrument.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Chucke E. Cheese will never be the same again.
"Derp de derp."
When in an orcastra or choir it's not just your job to do as was done in rehersed, it's your job to follow the conductor's lead.
The conductor must be able to change things on the fly, incase you were unable to practice enough in the location of the show. Plus there is no life to the music in question if all the musicians are doing is following the pattern set in the past and at that point you may as well just get the CD, cheaper and exactly the same each time.
The entire symphony must keep their eyes on the conductor at all times or they are not a part of the symphony, but a possbile burden on it.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
A metronome has just conducted the Cincinnati Pops.
Japanese firms have constantly pushed money into development of technology that is a loss-maker early on, until its adaption is widespread and cost-effective. The US companies have stockholders to appease...
The Japanese have stockholders and investors too, who also want a return on their money.
and long-term profits are hardly ever in their best interests.
Here's where you hit the nail on the head. This is where the corporate cultures diverge. The USA suffers a lot from impatience.
is that these robots can move like humans. That's the first step in the big picture. The brain is being developed independently but in conjunction.
With wireless high speed network connections the fact that these robots can move so well is sufficient. A high power computer system could take up an entire closet and feed commands to the robot that doesn't actually have to think itself. It just needs to relay sensory information to the big giant brain in the closet and it can relay back motion/speech commands.
The final step is then to get that big giant brain down to a size that can fit into the robot itself.
The advantage to seperating the brain from the body as far as robots go is that you can independently upgrade either without breaking compatibility and you can maximize the major functions. You can focus on human like speech and movement for the robot and AI with the seperate "brain" system.
Imagine one of these robots being able to log into Deep Blue or whatever and being able to sit at a table and play chess. Instead of just printing out commands that a human then has to process, the robot can move the pieces itself. Or log into a home system and be able to do chores. And you don't have to worry about cramming the AI into a small package. Size doesn't matter since you can just shove the system anywhere.
By seperating the brain from the machine you can make a common robot "drone" that can be used for any number of tasks.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Dear god, I hate posting to slashdot, but..... I play second bassoon professionally for this orchestra, and have played in many ensembles from my college days here including the Aspen Festival and Concert orchestras and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. There is not a single professional musician I have met in my 15 years of playing that shares your opinion. Conductors are about rehearsals, not performances.
My parents were both distiguished concert players and they're opinion on the matter was that the conductor really only mattered in rehersal.
Okay, I'll assume you're somewhat knowledgeable for the sake of discussion.
just imagine what would happen if the conductor tried to change something funidmental! He could only count on part of his symphony paying attention,
What?? Only part of the orchestra is paying attention at any given time? This runs counter to the idea of an orchestra. If it's not subject to change after the rehearsal, then there's no need for a conductor, and, consequently, no need for playing live -- which defeats having an orchestra.
Sure, much of it is show. But, if a conductor couldn't change something up in the middle of a piece (instruments breaking, members having an off-day, divine inspiration, etc.) because the orchestra isn't paying attention or is unwilling to change during the performance, then the members should be kicked off. After all, the members should already have the music completely memorized and should be watching the conductor at all times.
If people wanted to hear a symphony played by 50 individuals and which never changed, they'd buy the CD and be done with it.
So, I'm sorry if you were offended. It just rubs me the wrong way to hear of people's selfishness when it's not supposed to be their call. But maybe I read your post wrong, or you didn't quite phrase everything the way you really wanted to. So I ask: are members really ignoring the conductor? Have I and others paid to see a bunch of individuals play instead of a united, living orchestra?
I didn't see your reply until after I finished mine. It is nice to see I'm not the only one with these thoughts -- but it is uncanny.
..like the robot (man I would have died if one of them just stopped and wagged its arm)
The sense of balance does seem to be a well engineered accomplishment that they should be given high kudos for. Is the 5th symphony the best to demo this? Some Ravel or Tchicovsky would seem to have more of the challenging wild hand movements that this is being touted for.
Where I think they are being slightly misleading is that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is so well known for it's expressiveness over it's dynamics that it's implying that the robot understands and is putting forth this subtlety. Is it? That's not stated anywhere. The robot may be impressive but it probably no more understands it's goals beyond "wave hands" "compensate for balance" than Dirk the Daring understood the creepy dynamics of the Dragon's Lair video game.
Did they have audio sensors in different parts of the building? Was it recognizing tones tones of the trombone as overpowering the feeling of the strings (not just the volume) and try to suggest in it's movements? Could it tell if the drums were out of tempo? Could it respond if the woodwinds seemed flat? If it was able to do these things that would be far more impressive than merely demonstrating "balance" but I think most people hearing about the robot on their "soft news" shows will incorrectly assume that this thinking was what's being demoed by the robot.
Of course, a dynamic and emotional conductor could be even more interesting if done by a robot. The Brittish Trombone Society recounts some stories of that debut night (of works prior to the 5th) that would be even wilder if one could imagine a Terminator or RoboCop like individual conducting:
I'd certainly pay for a robotic conductor to shout "You have 10 seconds to comply!" or to see a choir boy be knocked across the hall with the emotive fury of the conductor
Beethoven is easy to conduct. Let's see the little guy do Rite of Spring!
Scott in NC
Thanks for the list of orchestras you have played for. I will make sure to tell my friends and relatives in those areas what you said, and how these particular orchestras are stuck-up, selfish, stubborn, and robotic -- with a recommendation to buy a (cheaper!) CD instead if they insist on hearing it.
Why not just record everyone in a studio, one at a time, and mix it all together. It would sound better than live.
You'd think that a big company like Sony would build a robot with it's head on right side up.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Tempo changes are likewise learnt. You practice the speed change until you all get the same speed, if a conductor tried to start a new section with a significantly different speed to that practiced, they would probably have to give up and go with the flow, because noone would follow them.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
really...
;-)
On a bright side, I recall a story about some (US? Maybe Russian? Do not remember now exactly when and where I heard the story) guy inventing some special shape/orientation of a hydroplane wing which was supposed to be at, say, 47.25 degrees to the water level... According to the story, Japanese subsequently patented all possible orientations of that wing in 0.25 degree steps +- 5 degrees. The problem was that the original description had a typo, it was supposed to be 57.25 degrees!
Not that I have any idea if it is true or not, but the parent IS very true. Just two words: "Bell Labs"...
And yes, I do have some very close Japanese friends.
Paul B.
This is pretty silly. A major professional orchestra doesn't "require" conducting...get them started (which the concertmaster/mistress) can do, and away they go. I'd love to see footage, but I don't see this as actually "directing" anything.
here...
Which will confuse some folks because of the alot of the music is not written to be precisely on the beat. (anticipations, etc)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
we're sleeping through the revolution....
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
as far as autonomous robots go, the qrio isn't really very autonomous. Though its motion control systems are state of the art and very impressive.
A key part to truly autonomous robots is a sense of locality - that is, can it determine "where in the world am I?" with reasonable accuracy. And I don't necessarily mean in the GPS coordinate sense. I mean, can you turn the robot off, move it to the corner of a room and turn it back on and it will quickly look around and say "oh, i'm in the northwest corner". Or better yet, take it somewhere its never been before, it'll look and move around and map it out and try to correlate its new location with old ones.
That's one of the more interesting problems in robotics at the moment, and a great deal of progress has been made in solving it - mainly by using laser scanners which make mapping easy.
The QRIO on the other hand uses stereoscopic vision, and nobody (that I know of) has yet to mesh that piece of technology with localization. So its sense of localization is limited by the presence of special colored landmarks.
Lasers are kind of a stop-gap technology though between low resolution sonars and full stereoscopic vision systems. Unfortunately robot vision is really hard to do anything non-trivial and takes enormous amounts of computing power.
-
Drop 2-4 sheets of toilet paper in the water before your first dump, shithead. The paper prevents excessive splashing, then if you have a second one, the first one softens the impact for that one. Who am I kidding, you would probably be better suited to shitting into your hands.
BTW, I piss as I shit. Why waste precious intestinal effort?
And to the previous idiot: BIDET. BIDET BIDET BIDET. B I D E T .
I for one welcome our cultured metallic overlords.
Anybody else think of the Penny Aracde Dancing Robot?
- 11 -03&res=l
- 03 -01
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
Remember the Simpson's episode where Homer had to clear out his garage to make room for his tavern?
Remember him tossing the robot after the robot looks imploringly at Homer and says "Father give me legs"?
Yes, I thought you might.
A few more decades and my friend you will throw up your guts when after being truely moved by the performance of an artist, tears at the brim of your eyes, you will realize in horror that what you've just watched was no human.
I don't know if you've noticed the pace at which they are "evolving". One day they will be more human than human.
However, we did because there would be some subtle changes or maybe your section had picked up the volume.
As for just "getting the CD" part of the thing of the rehearsals is for the conductor to get their vision across to you, with the performance being the delivery of it. If you ignore the conductor on the night, but remember what he's told you before, his vision will still come through.
Unlike 99.9% of the posters on this forum, I actually try to only post comments for topics in which I have experience.
Your reply is a perfect example of why this site died a long time ago.
Your last suggestion is laughable, and sounds like something only a non-musician technophile would suggest.