I’m having flashbacks to childhood visits to Showbiz Pizza, but this robot band, put together by researchers at Drexel University for an Engineering Week exhibition, is a bit more impressive than the animatronic animals that entertained people over plates of bad pizza.
For one thing: These musical bots aren’t just going through the motions, performing pre-programmed movements in time to a tape of music.
Produced by the Music & Entertainment Technology Laboratory, the HUBOs are operating autonomously (not human-controlled). Their movements are directed by student-developed software to perform the gestures necessary to produce the appropriate notes and beats as dictated by a musical score. Every sound in the video was performed by the robots.
MET-lab student Matthew Prockup created the musical arrangement for drum kit and three “Hubophones”, novel percussion instruments designed and constructed by the lab for this performance.