Slashdot Mirror
Clarinet Wins Robotic Orchestra Competition
Sasha writes "The Australian designed robotic clarinet beat out Dutch and Finnish entries this year at the robotic orchestra competition. The researchers don't expect to replace human musicians, but are instead interested in what makes the difference between playing music well and playing music poorly. There is also a video available of the performance."
I, for one, welcome our new clarinet playing overlords.
Actually, the answer is yes.
Look on the bright side. They could have made a robotic bagpipe player.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
A video of the second place winning guitar picking robot from the Netherlands. Sounds good to me. :)
After the performance, the clarinet was overheard saying, "All your brass are belong to us."
-g.
Well, I prefer this one :-)
http://vimeo.com/1109226
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Here is the contest website and a longer article.
Commenting without saying anything is a much bigger weakness in this community. Well followed.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Same could be said of music, art, etc... doesn't make it any less interesting or important to people. Curiosity, tinkering, and "because I can" have lead to all sorts of amazing things. Just because you don't understand the motivation doesn't mean it's not worthwhile to someone in some way.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
I would take your comment even further, and say that in general "fate" tends to laugh at plans, and (anecdotally, of course) most efforts undertaken to advance along a set path and accomplish a specific goal are fraught with failures and setbacks. On the other hand, efforts undertaken for the pleasure of doing them frequently not only yield our best culture, but our most innovative advancements (and at worst, they were generally at least amusing).
That's not to say we shouldn't set goals, we should just expect that our true successes in life will come from what others might view as frivolous.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
You are making a false assumption that the only thing that comes out of the project is a robot that plays the clarinet. There are several other outputs:
First, some students learned how to build a robotic system. This has applications far beyond artistic works. Often sound and art is a very good excuse to spend time learning things that can be used for "real" applications later. For instance, would you prefer students build a clarinet playing robot or a robot that throws beer? There are plenty of examples of "useless" projects undertaken by undergrads -- but they then move on to produce useful results later in life.
Secondly, there is the psychological / human-centric part of the work: building robotics to mimic human gesture and human expression teaches us a lot about how we work.
This is called "basic" research: it doesn't necessarily consist of making something that DOES something, but it allows us to learn more about ourselves. Learning what techniques are needed for expressive clarinet playing implies that we know what those techniques are-- it implies we know what "expression" is, and that we understand much of the physics behind airflow and reed action.
This is interesting stuff. You say it is a clarinet that is "not being played very well." Well, WHY is it not being played very well? What can be improved in the playing technique? Why can humans do it better? Is it the lack of "expression" in playing (cognitive), or is something wrong with the airflow-reed interaction (physics). Or both?
This is physics and engineering and psychology all rolled into one amusing project. How can you say it's useless?
Robotic pianos have been around for over 100 years & they've never sounded as good as a human. After all this time they finally moved on to other instruments.
A colleague told me of this discussion and suggested that I give a brief explanation of the motivation for this project. I'm from the Music Acoustics Group at UNSW. We maintain a large web site http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/music/ for the benefit of musicians, students and interested others. It has more details on the robot. The introduction on our site is aimed at a good high school student, but if you go deep enough it leads to our technical research papers. - Most of the time, we study real musical instruments, real musicians, the voice and the ear. Some of this is sponsored by companies (instrument makers, a medical device company, a museum), but much of it is curiosity research. - For us, the robot project complements one of our areas in which we study real musicians and how they play. We want to know, in some detail, why a real musician plays better and makes a better sound than a beginner. (Curiosity research, but with an obvious application in music teaching and sometimes instrument design.) - The robot is a tool for testing our understanding of the clarinet-player system. The current version is very primitive: it was put together in a hurry for the competition. But in the next year or so we shall use it to understand a range of questions: * Why does a clarinet reed squeak? How can you stop it? * What are the important parameters in a good sound? * How important are tongue position, soft palate, glottis? What are the best combinations? * How important is lip damping, and how does it depend on the reed? * What are the important parameters in fine pitch control? * What are the important parameters in expressive performance? * What is necessary to convey warmth? * What is necessary to follow a conductor? - To some of these, of course, we already have answers from our previous research. But we want to have more confidence in those answers. - So for the Music Acoustics Lab, this robot is a very useful tool. It was also a good project for two undergraduate students (Paul and Jean) in physics: a project that required a range of experimental and analytical techniques. The other groups in the robot team have different motivations. - For Mechanical Engineering, this robot was an interesting challenge. It was a good undergraduate student project for Kim: a range of questions to answer and difficulties to overcome. - It was also an interesting challenge for Mark, a Computer Engineering student Mark. In fact all of the students involved were highly motivated, worked well, learned a lot -- and had a good time. For university staff, this alone would justify the project. - For NICTA (a national research centre in ICT), the contest was a formal challenge. A good way of displaying expertise and applications in embedded systems, and a good way of inspiring students. (John Judge is from NICTA). - The team details and some more discussion is at http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/clarinetrobot.html Music Acoustics.