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Toyota Robot Violinist Wows At Shanghai Expo

Posted by timothy on from the is-it-using-the-suzuki-method? dept.

kkleiner writes "The Shanghai World Expo got a special treat this past week in the Japanese pavilion, when Toyota's famed violin-playing robot thrilled the crowd with a rendition of the Chinese folk song Mo Li Hua (jasmine flower). The bipedal artificial violinist hasn't been seen much since its debut back in 2007. Now we have footage of the Toyota bot playing Mo Li Hua in Shanghai as well as its original rendition of Pomp and Circumstance from 2007."

1 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Re:wow by ahankinson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You're just demonstrating your ignorance. You do realize that even getting to this stage is a feat in engineering, right? Or that playing a musical instrument is a highly complex motor skill, and that you were just shown an artificial intelligence that can do it, right? Your metric is completely unrealistic - have you ever tried playing violin? It's not easy. The metric should be how much *better* it is than an unskilled player, rather than how much *worse* it is than a skilled player.

    Expecting them to have something more polished is like saying "Meh, people went to the moon. I expected them to go to Mars."