The three-armed robot conducts an orchestra to show off the latest advances in robot technology — a project by the Dresden Symphony Orchestra and TU Dresden. The project offers new perspectives on the musical collaboration of humans and machines.
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00:00Three robotic arms, the kind you might find in the industrial sector, repurposed for conducting an orchestra.
00:07Here, the baton makes way for three coloured lightsabers, keeping time in the premiere of the Robot Symphony.
00:14Specially composed for the occasion, it's a piece no human could conduct.
00:18That's because each robot arm follows its own beat and tempo. Have a listen.
00:31Sounds interesting.
00:34The seven jointed robotic arms move as fluidly as a conductor's, but it wasn't without human effort.
00:40Dresden Symphony Orchestra's artistic director Markus Rindt had to teach the robot each movement individually.
00:47I had to put on a kind of glove, which had various tracking sensors on it.
01:01But it didn't work very well. At some point I thought, could we just use the robot itself?
01:07And that actually worked. The robotic arm fit around mine, almost like a second arm.
01:13And with a fair amount of resistance, I was able to move it around.
01:22So the movements are almost human. But what was it like for the musicians?
01:29The biggest difficulty to work with the robot arms is they don't give any emotions at all.
01:34They don't see what we do, not with the tempo and not with emotions, and they don't give anything.
01:39It's just doing the beats, which is fine. It's okay. But I mean, the music is so much more.
01:46Without a human conductor, the orchestra is pretty much left to its own devices.
01:51The three arms follow a strict tempo, regardless of the orchestra's response.
01:56That's why researchers from the Technical University of Dresden plan to integrate sophisticated artificial intelligence.
02:04AI plays a role when it comes to recognizing the environment.
02:10If we want the robot conductor to recognize how the orchestra is playing and how they respond, then we will certainly need AI.