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]"

Comments

Re:What?

[rasafras]

Q-RIO -> CURIO, I would imagine.

Re:What's the big deal?

[bobbabemagnet]

Yet another hasty response by someone who didn't rtfa. If you read the technology behind QRIO on Sony's website, you'll see that it can walk on uneven and slanted ground, walk with it's center of balance not always over its feet, recognize its location, get up after falling (which it only does when pushed, and even then it recognizes that it is falling and takes measures to protect itself), and then it gets cool. QRIO has voice recognition, face recognition, can carry on conversations and learn new words, and carry stuff.

This guy is more capable than your average aging grandfather, and probably more able to read an article than your average aging slashdotter.

Re:Whatev'

[van der Rohe]

Anyone who has ever played in a professional ensemble knows that a rehearsed orchestra can conduct itself almost flawlessly.

Provided that the music being played is strictly metronomic and from the common practice period. In fact, anything later than say, middle period Beethoven would be a disaster without a conductor.

The problem is that music in the High Classical period and after started to use rubato, fermatas, and numerous tempo changes. 80+ people on stage simply can't coordinate that without a leader.

And we're just talking about rhythm - this says nothing about balance issues in the hall, etc.

Conducting Clip

[Alien54]

Link to the page with a video clip of the conducting.

Which will confuse some folks because of the alot of the music is not written to be precisely on the beat. (anticipations, etc)