I love how brutally this robot plays the piano. Yes, it has a slight disadvantage with only one finger on each hand, but Alyssa Batula and Yougmoo Kim at Drexel University are trying to teach more than one of these robots to play together, which would neatly solve the problem. You’d only need five of them to equal a human, right?

The robot listens to itself play, and if it makes a mistake, it can tell and correct itself and make sure that it never makes that mistake again, which is like the whole POINT of teaching a robot to do stuff. It may screw up once, but it can be programmed never to screw up again. You know, mostly.

VIA [ New Scientist ]

VIA [ Plastic Pals ]

We know HUBO has skills: he’s able to wield foam swords with fearsome precision. And it looks like he’s got some skills when it comes to dancing, too… Unfortunately, those skills all involve being able to automatically detect and tract live audio beat, and not actually doing anything especially groovy with that knowledge. Well, you have to start somewhere, I guess, but maybe HUBO could take some lessons from HRP-4C.

[ DASL ]

You know, I kinda hate to say it, but that actually looks pretty good. Or at least, relatively good. Last year, AIST’s HRP-4C robot was somewhat woodenly singing J-Pop, but this performance is borderline believable if you squint really hard while trying your level best to willfully disbelieve that she’s a robot. Maybe she took some pointers from their newer HRP-4?

I guess what I’m saying is, this seems to me (from a purely artistic and non-technical perspective) to be a significant improvement. Much of the credit likely goes to AIST’s new dance choreography software, which prevents users without robotics experience from planning dance that might sending their robot sprawling. Dancing might be a bit of a novelty for robots, but it’s certainly a good way to try and teach fluid and non-robotic movement, which is a big step towards less-uncanny humanoids.

[ AIST Press Release (Translated) ] VIA [ Pink Tentacle ]

Really, I have no idea what this means. It’s “Keepon Dreaming” and it’s apparently not a Photoshop, but comes from the official BeatBots blog. Maybe this is the new $30 consumer version of Keepon? Maybe?

Please?

[ BeatBots ]

ETH Zürich’s dancing quadrotors are back (with a friend), dancing to a new arrangement entitled ‘Rise Up.’ You know, it would be pretty cool if they could somehow allow people to submit music and choreography for the robots to act out… I have no idea how that would work, I’m just saying, it would be cool.

Pretty soon, that won’t even be necessary, though… The robots will do all their own choreography, creating a dance on the fly for whatever music you decide to throw at them. And then, the world! Bwa ha ha!

[ Music in Motion ]

Remember how Chief Cook tried to cheat at pong at ICRA in 2008 by going “hey, look over there, a dancing robot!” Well, now we know what he was pointing at.

If you want more (you want more, right?) head over to Eric Sauser’s website to watch a video of Chief Cook dancing all around Switzerland (complete with table dances) to some sweet, sweet Buffalo Springfield.

[ LASA @ EPFL ]
[ BeatBots ]

This is neither the first, nor the best, robot dancing video we’ve seen, but what I like about this one is how unapologetically not made for dancing this robot is. It’s an industrial robot, in an industrial setting, and you get the sense that it might be neglecting its duty as boxes pass it by in the background while it’s groovin’ out.

So why is it dancing, you ask? Because it’s a robot, and if you have access to a robot, it’s basically impossible to keep yourself from finding cool (albeit non-productive) stuff to do with it.

VIA [ YouTube ]

Last year, it was a Billie Jean tribute dance. This year, twenty Aldebaran Robotics Naos are kicking it up a notch by dancing in sync to nearly ten minutes worth of music including Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. Never mind the choreography that must have been involved… Consider what ten minutes with no screw ups implies about the precision and repeatability of Nao’s software. Impressive, but until Nao figures out how to do a head spin, I think Manoi can still bust better moves.

VIA [ Wired ]

To kick off Hannover Messe (an industrial fair in Germany) last month, ABB taught one of their industrial robots to beat on stuff. Musically.

The robot percussionist was accompanied in its performance by a “real” cellist who commented “the industrial robot is a congenial partner and dominated his instruments with some virtuosity”.

The robot wasn’t an autonomous musician, at least not entirely… It looked like the guy controlling the robot was telling it what sequence of pre-programmed movements to make. If I’m not mistaken, he’s doing some stuff with a Tenori-On also, but I have no idea what… Maybe mixing background loops on the fly?

I love it when companies who build serious industrial robots take a step back and say, “let’s just do something cool,” because robots are cool, and they’re good for much much more than just totally taking over from us humans.

[ ABB ]

Thanks Maanasi!