Musician and researcher Mason Bretan plays jazz with a backup band of four robots in what at first glance appears to be a clever application of dancing robots and pre-recorded tracks, but is actually something much more remarkable. While two of the robots do indeed play prerecorded percussion, the other two are actually improvising along with Bretan’s playing. And all of them are swaying and dancing in response to the music. The largest robot, named Shimon, improvises on a marimba–a complex task that require the robot to pre-position its arms in anticipation of the next note. You can see Bretan and his robo-band in action in the six-minute improvisational piece, “What You Say.” Bretan developed the robots as part of his PhD research at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
via Laughing Squid
