Robotic musicianship doctoral candidate Mason Bretan at Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology filmed this intriguing robotic jazz performance with three Shimi robots and a larger Shimon robot. It really gets cooking about a minute in and when Shimon gets a marimba solo.
Mason says his work examines "machine improvisation, path planning, and embodied cognition." This composition is called "What You Say."
The smaller Shimi robots figure out how to move based on an analysis of the music and Shimon generates an improvisation given a precomposed chord progression using a generative algorithm that jointly optimizes for higher level musical parameters and its physical constraints… And through the power of artificial intelligence, signal processing, and engineering I firmly believe it is possible for machines to be artistic, creative, and inspirational.
