Musical Performance Robots and Its Applications

The late Prof. Ichiro Kato and his colleagues started the WABOT (WAseda roBOT) Project in 1970. The WABOT Project promotes research activities which aim to construct a new relationship between humans and robots. Such a robot is called "personal robot". It is expected that personal robots will provide assistance in housework for aged people and for entertainment to keep up the amenity of life and human environment in the next century. In 1973, the WABOT-1 was developed as the first fun-scale biped humanoid robot in the world. In 1980, the WABOT project restarted to create a new robot, WABOT-2, piano playing robot. Playing a keyboard instrument was set up as an intelligent task that the WABOT-2 aimed to accomplish, since an artistic activity such as playing a keyboard instrument would require human-like intelligence and dexterity. WABOT-2 was completed in 1984 and the WASUBOT, the sophisticated model of WABOT-2, was displayed at Tsukuba Science Exposition in 1985. The robot musician WABOT-2 can converse with a person, recognize a normal musical score with his vision system and play an electronic organ and a piano with his two arms, two hands and ten fingers. The WABOT-2 is also able to accompany a singer by recognizing the pitch of the singing voice. The WABOT-2 has fifty DOFs in total and can tap a key over sixteen times per second. The searching algorithm can determine the four limbs movement automatically based on musical score information. The WABOT-2 has the ability to perform middle-level tunes. Bio SHIGEKI SUGANO received the B.S., M.S., and Dr. of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering in 1981, 1983, and 1989, respectively, from Waseda University. From 1987 to 1991, he was a Research Associate in Waseda University. Since 1991, he has been a Faculty Member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Waseda University, where he is currently a Professor. From 1993 to 1994, he was a Visiting Scholar in the Mechanical Engineering Department, Stanford University. Since 2001, he has been a Director of the WABOT-HOUSE laboratory. He is a member of the Humanoid Robotics Institute of Waseda University. Since 2001, he has been President of Japan Association for Automation Advancement. His research interests include anthropomorphic robot, dexterous manipulator, and human-robot communication. He received the Technical Innovation Award from the Robotics Society Japan for the development of Waseda Piano-Playing Robot: WABOT-2 in 1991. He received the JSME Medal for Outstanding Paper from the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2000. He received JSME Fellow Award in 2006. He is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Advanced Robotics. He serves as the Head of the System Integration Division of SICE. He serves the Secretary of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society (RAS). He serves as a Co-Chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Humanoid Robotics. He served as the IEEE RAS Conference Board, Meetings Chair from 1997 to 2005. He served as the General Chair of the 2003 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM 2003). He serves as the General Co-Chair of the 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2006). Invited Lecture History of the Development of the Waseda Flutist Robot Atsuo Takanishi Department of Mechanical Engineering Humanoid Robotics Institute Waseda University Abstract The relation between the human and the music has a long history dating from the antiquity, during which poetry, dancing and music were inseparable and constitute an important mean of communication of everyday life. During the golden era of automata, 17 and 18 centuries, the music also served as a tool for understanding how the human organism is able of performing high skilful activities. In particular, some researchers were interested in studying how the human is able of performing musical instruments, such as the flute. Nowadays, thanks to recent technological advances, several researchers have been developing anthropomorphic robots that roughly replicate some of the human motor skills such as walking, dancing, etc. However, such robots are still far away from understanding and processing emotional states as the human does. In order to overcome this limitation, the research on music still seems particularly promising; since it is a universal communication medium. Furthermore, the research on music can also provide expressive tools that traditionally have been hidden in musicians’ skills. For that reason, at Waseda University, the research of the anthropomorphic flutist robot was started since 1990. The research on the flutist robot is focused on understanding the motor control process required to play the flute from an engineering point of view. Additionally, this research aims in proposing novel ways of interaction between the human and the robot in musical terms. Since the first version of the anthropomorphic flutist robot, the WF-1, several improvements on the mechanical design have been realized to imitate the physiology and anatomy of the human organs involved during the flute playing. In this talk an overview of the development of the Waseda Flutist Robot will be presented.The relation between the human and the music has a long history dating from the antiquity, during which poetry, dancing and music were inseparable and constitute an important mean of communication of everyday life. During the golden era of automata, 17 and 18 centuries, the music also served as a tool for understanding how the human organism is able of performing high skilful activities. In particular, some researchers were interested in studying how the human is able of performing musical instruments, such as the flute. Nowadays, thanks to recent technological advances, several researchers have been developing anthropomorphic robots that roughly replicate some of the human motor skills such as walking, dancing, etc. However, such robots are still far away from understanding and processing emotional states as the human does. In order to overcome this limitation, the research on music still seems particularly promising; since it is a universal communication medium. Furthermore, the research on music can also provide expressive tools that traditionally have been hidden in musicians’ skills. For that reason, at Waseda University, the research of the anthropomorphic flutist robot was started since 1990. The research on the flutist robot is focused on understanding the motor control process required to play the flute from an engineering point of view. Additionally, this research aims in proposing novel ways of interaction between the human and the robot in musical terms. Since the first version of the anthropomorphic flutist robot, the WF-1, several improvements on the mechanical design have been realized to imitate the physiology and anatomy of the human organs involved during the flute playing. In this talk an overview of the development of the Waseda Flutist Robot will be presented. Bio ATSUO TAKANISHI is a Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Waseda University and a concurrent Professor and one of the core members of the HRI (Humanoid Robotics Institute), Waseda University. He received the B.S.E degree in 1980, the M.S.E degree in 1982 and the Ph.D. degree in 1988, all in Mechanical Engineering from Waseda University. His current researches are related to Humanoid Robots and Cyborgs, such as: biped walking robots for modeling human biped walking; biped locomotors for carrying handicapped or elderlies; mastication robots to mechanically simulate human mastication for clarifying the hypothesis in dentistry, the jaw opening closing trainer robots for patients having difficulties in jaw opening and/or closing, flute playing robot to quantitatively analyze human flute playing by collaborating with a professional flutist, upper body humanoid robots with emotionally behave like a human based upon the "Equations of Mind" including emotion, anthropomorphic talking robots which mechanically speak Japanese vowel and consonant sounds, etc. Prof. Takanishi is a member of Robotics Society of Japan (a board member in 1992 and 1993), Japanese Society of Biomechanisms, Japanese Society of Mechanical Engineers, Japanese Society of Instrument and Control Engineers and Society of Mastication Systems (a major board member from 1996 to current), IEEE and other medicine and dentistry related societies in Japan. He received Best Paper Award (Application) IEEE/RSJ IROS2003, JSME Distinguished Research Activity Award in Robotics and Mechatronics in 2003, the Best of Asia Award from BusinessWeek Magazine in 2001, the Finalist of Best Paper Award in ICRA1999 from IEEE/RSJ in 1999, the ROBOMECH Award from RSJ and Japanese Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1998 and the Best paper Award from RSJ in 1998. Development of an Automatic Piano that Produce Appropriate Touch for the Accurate Expression of a Soft Tone-