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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]"
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.
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.
Yup.
Did it lean toward the section that was to be prominent in the next passage? Did it succeed in getting the attention of the one section (and only that section) that was dragging down the temp? How about deciding that with the particular acoustics at the venue being what they were that the flute section was a bit piercing and decide to have them play a bit quiter?
Didn't think so.
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
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.
Hell, the 0th law is even more appropriate.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
So true. By the time the orchestra is on stage performing the piece, anyone could stand up there and wave their arms and the music would be pretty good. The real mark of a good conductor is how he prepares the orchestra in rehersal. That is where the artistic vision comes across. Once he demonstrates his idea of how the piece should sound, he can conduct with subtle nuances that are easily understood by the orchestra. But only with good preparation is that possible.
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?
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
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.
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!!!
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