eldavojohn writes "Toyota has unveiled a robot that can play the violin. From the article: 'Toyota said it planned to further advance the robot's dexterity to enable it to use tools and assist with domestic duties and nursing and medical care. The robot has 17 joints in both of its hands and arms now.' It seems there have been small — or maybe even strange, impractical — advances in robotics repeatedly with demonstrations of robots performing a specialized task. Are we merely struggling to hard code each human activity as we strive for an all purpose android? Is there a chance artificial intelligence & robotics will ever become generalized enough to make interaction interesting?"
While it might be difficult to design a robot that is dexterous enough to play the violin, electronics have been outperforming humans in the tonal subtlety field for half a century. Nearly all music exploiting anything more than quarter-tones is realized using electronics.
True, but a robot ear can never be programmed to hear what a human ear hears. A robot can't really bring out the emotion in a song. (It could be very good at simulating emotion, though).
I wouldn't say never. Psychoacoustics is a fairly young field, and the models are still being worked on and changed. Give it a little while, the models are already good and getting better every year.
Oh, I'm pretty sure eventually they'll figure it out. It's all just chemical reactions, man. And there's already enough music theory out there. So the rules are already (sort of) written. There's been experiments with music-making robots since the 50's. Not huge progress yet, but it will happen.
I do believe, eventually, "creativity" will be programmable.
Creativity might be programmable in things like music that is purely an exploration of formal structure and style, or abstract graphic design, or perhaps extending the patterns within a well-established style (say contemporary housing architecture). However, writing a screenplay or a poem, or picking a new video game setting even is a much more complicated task, as it involves an interaction between formal artistic constraints and definions with a full human experience of the world. Getting to that point wi
On the contrary. I contend that it is possible that, given adequate dexterity, one could construct a robot that would take a preselected song and render the music in a way which evokes the same emotional qualities from the performance that a skilled human could accomplish. In fact, there's an easy way you can do it without the robot: record a skilled human's performance into an MP3 file and play it back.:P Now, physical reproductions are a lot harder, but entirely plausible.
why not? you're made of organic molecules that are assembled into certain structures, your brain has a certain layout and your ears transduce sound a certain way- once you emulate the transduction part and develop a good enough representation of the human brain with an AI in regard to music then you *can* program a robot eat to hear what a human's does, you can even optimize the sound if you have a great enough understanding. heck it doesn't even need to be us doing the designing! by the time that advan
Not true; there are many "expression" marks put into the score, the interpretation of which requires the player/conductor to be familiar with appropriate idiomatic interpretations of the time period. In fact this has always existed, but hasn't always been explicitly written. e.g. baroque era pieces don't have any expressive indicators at all, but *did* have specific interpretations as they typically went with specific dances requiring particular tempos and so on.
Furthermore much of the work that a musician does involves subtle modifications to the rendition that enhance the clarity of the structure. e.g. microtiming deviations in the melody and subtle tonal inflections are a major part of what makes multiple voices traceable to your perception in polyphonic music -- with strict timing it is *much* more difficult to hear out any polyphonic structure. These effects can be measured quantitatively, by the way, but are far too complex to notate in any score intended for humans to read, and for the most part are too complex for an experience musician to be fully conscious of. (It is possible, however, to program a computer to reproduce them using machine learning).
Finally there is in fact an emotional aspect of music that is actually a consequence of some neural structure or other brain process. This is an active research topic. Likely it is a type of synaesthesia (e.g. mint flavor -> cool sensation). In other words the emotional response to music isn't just the performer "making it up", it's sort of short-circuit in the brain of the listener. Since this is basically a universal effect among humans it would be silly to think that the composer wasn't aware of it as well.
I agree, but it could be used to perfectly reproduce a master performance (given that instrument quality, etc. are equal, which may not be the case.) They may not be able to do it themselves, but they might be able to serve as a new sort of player piano.
Pretty much anytime a robot tries to do something a human can do we're faced with these type of comments. Ever since the first computer started to play chess (even twenty years ago they weren't much match for an average player, but look at them now)...
As I write this there are 3 replies to your comment modded up but none of them seem to mention that obvious (I hope) fact that programming this robot to play the violin has absolutely nothing to do with matching the musical abilities of humans. Toyota are not demonstrating a product here. They're not saying "in stores next fall: robots that can play violins". They don't think there's a huge market for violin playing robots out there that is just waiting to be tapped.
The point of this demonstration is to show that their robot research has reached a point where they have built a robot with joints that have sufficient degrees of freedom and controllable accuracy that they can do this kind of stunt. You're supposed to look at a robot playing the violin and say "well, if it can play the violin then it can hold a power drill or other tools!"
I'd suggest that maybe they should program the robot to put together some of the crappy furniture you get from Ikea but then people will claim it wasn't cost effective to use a billion dollar robot to do the work of a home handy man or something.
Mod parent up! It's one thing to weld a door on a car but quite another to find a shirt in the dryer, iron it, undo all but the top botton, and hang it in the closet.
I remember, a few decades ago, playing violin in one of those school concerts for parents (luckily I was near the back of the crowd). A string popped on me but I was still able to adjust and play on the remaining 3 without too much fuss or screechy, out-of-whack noises[1]. I wasn't finging anywhere near the upper or lower ranges, so it worked. I no longer play that instrument unfortunately, it wasn't cool enough at the time.
[1] Or at least that's what my parents told me afterwards.;)
I suppose this raises another question regarding the increasingly human attributes of robots. Is something that is "handmade" or "handplayed" by a robot any more or less valuable than its human equivalent? For instance: it may be very impressive that a robot can play pomp and circumstance, but once this becomes more commonplace (as strange it may seem now), does it have more/less value than a human being able to reproduce the same sequence of notes?
Well, it isn't exactly the same thing, but MIDI with good synths has been used to "perfectly" play a composition. Especially for instruments with simple timbres like drums and piano, a synth can sound very close to the real thing. Even with these ways to create a "perfect" performance, people still find a human performance impressive. It's kind of like meeting a person who can compute logarithms in their head, or find all the factors of a number without a calculator. Sure, a computer can do it--it may even do it faster, but I don't think that the fact that a machine can do something makes the feat less impressive when accomplished by a human. I'm still impressed when someone can run a marathon, even if a machine could do it just as easily, if not better. I don't see why there is so much concern that robotic performances will cheapen the value of human performances. Besides, if a programmer is able to write a program that is able to take a piece of music and interpret it beautifully, then it is still a human achievement in that a programmer was brilliant enough to decipher not only decipher the subtle psychology of what makes one performance sound emotional and powerful and the another sound mechanical, but also codify an algorithm that would imitate that interpretation. Kind of like designing a conversation bot to beat the Turing test. It's still a human accomplishment. Remember, the machine is us/ing us.
Besides, who wants to listen to program-created music anyway? Music is always created from the culture of the generation, and created by a person with years of life to think about what kind of music he wants to write and what he thinks people will listen to. Sure, you could data-mine the internet, but then you only have a program using second-hand data. Until computers hear, see, and understand what people do in their daily lives, nothing they can produce can be culturally significant except for being th
I suppose this raises another question regarding the increasingly human attributes of robots. Is something that is "handmade" or "handplayed" by a robot any more or less valuable than its human equivalent?
Cynical answer: less, because an elite art community is the one that officially decides these things, and since robots would replace them, they feel threatened, and self-servingly answer "less".
Have you ever been to a life jazz quartet? Ever seen them screw up and 1 second later the facial expression on the other 3 that didn't screw up? Ever give the guitarist a genuine smile when he hit that high note round and sweet? And he gave the smile back? Then the next bar he stretches it even higher just to show you who's daddy?
Live performances aren't about the music sometimes, but the performance. Much like watching a live hockey game. It isn't just about hockey.
For the love of all that is holy why did they teach it to play that song?! I've been spending all of my years since high school band trying to erase that song from memory after playing it over and over and over for hours on end.
Are we merely struggling to hard code each human activity as we strive for an all purpose android?
Yes, playing the violin is a hard coded activity, but the important advance here is the new dexterity of this robot. It isn't so much an advance in artificial intelligence as it is an advance in mechanics.
Is there a chance artificial intelligence & robotics will ever become generalized enough to make interaction interesting?
Absolutely.:) I'll do it myself if no one else gets to it first.
They can stand back up after being kicked [slashdot.org] and now can play the violin. Anyone sane could obviously see that this completes their skill set. They'll use the sweet sounding music to lull us all to sleep, and then with their new found balance and agility put the kibosh on us all. I can feel their cold, icy hands around my throat just now! It's over man; it's over!
Specialized robots work better than general-purpose ones (DUH!). Creating a robot that is as capable at general tasks as a human is pointless, at least from the economic standpoint (unless you need a Terminator). Humans are cheaper than robots. Imagine the R&D and production cost involved in creating a robot as agile as the human body. Then, imagine fixing such a robot.
Robots perform special tasks better than humans. Surgery is an obvious application, as the summary pointed out. What could be more steady than a hand with hydraulic (or whatever they use) joints. If something is able to play the Violin, it very well may be able to cut you open along a very precise line, remove a cancer/organ/ while the surgeon is sitting on his butt, operating a computer. Surgery is very tiresome from what I understand (I worked in the dept. of orthopaedics in college), and I'd imagine if this is coupled with the proper software and human interface, it would work splendidly for medical purposes.
I'd think the Medical field would be the most interested in this tech. Surgeons could maybe even perform an extra surgery a day ($$$$$$$), and Hospitals usually have big moolah to spend on fancy-schmancy tech.
Creating a robot that is as capable at general tasks as a human is pointless, at least from the economic standpoint (unless you need a Terminator). Humans are cheaper than robots.
They are now. Calculators used to be more expensive than hiring ten people to do the job.
Then, imagine fixing such a robot.
Since we're talking about the distant future, I imagine the thing will eventually be able to fix himself. Or be fixed by his peers.
Robots offer an advantage over humans when every repeated action needs to be identical.
That's pretty much like surgery. Most medicine isn't about making up stuff on the spot or putting "your own riff" on a procedure, it's about carrying out a specific procedure in a specific way. Of course it's adapted to the specific variations in each body, but that's not necessarily so hard. A lot of it is like airline pilots. What they do is very easy, but we respect them because it's so important.
A soft drink machine was invented that would complain if people kicked it or tried to tilt it. So it got kicked and tilted more than any other.
Some cars, when parked, ask people to move away if they get too close, so people deliberately get close and try and taunt it.
A new digital media format is released, with a claim to being uncrackable, so it gets cracked very quickly.
So logically, what happens when a robot gets invented that's sole claim to fame is that it won't fall over, even if kicked?
And now we find that even a robot who's sole purpose is to play the violin is going to get kicked too, just to see what happens...
I think i'll invent a line of robots who's sole purpose is to whack you over the head with a cardboard tube if you kick them or other robots over, or just generally abuse technology for your own amusement. Then i'll release version 2 which features a crowbar instead of a cardboard tube. I'll make a fortune selling them as guards for kick-overable robots, vending machines, cars, and DVD's.
I think i'll invent a line of robots who's sole purpose is to whack you over the head with a cardboard tube if you kick them or other robots over, or just generally abuse technology for your own amusement. Then i'll release version 2 which features a crowbar instead of a cardboard tube. I'll make a fortune selling them as guards for kick-overable robots, vending machines, cars, and DVD's.
It'll have a hard time protecting anything, being constantly mobbed by people dressed in tight leather straps, handcuffs and hoods with signs reading "Hurt me, I've been bad."
It's hard enough to find *people* who are interesting. Not impossible, mind you; but there are an awful lot of dolts out there. We'll have to *surpass* the quality of humanity before we produce robots that don't fail the "intesting" QC check at unacceptable levels. It's not a total loss though. The failures might be useful as politicians, supermodels, talk-show hosts, morning DJs, etc.
The Flight of the Bumblebee [wikipedia.org]? Until then, I would rather see Toyota focusing on bringing back trucks like FJ80 instead of the scum infested soccer-mom mobiles they tend to produce now.
It seems there have been small -- or maybe even strange, impractical -- advances in robotics
Welcome to the world of research. It takes a lot of work to make small advances like this one. The point of research is to solve specific, difficult problems. I'm willing to bet there were other reasons for this project.
(a) Violano-virtuoso:Video link [youtube.com] Considering it was made almost 100 years ago, isn't bad! This one used discs to rub against the strings to produce the sound. The Toyota robot uses the back and forth motion of a bow which is definitely more complex.
it seems, with perhaps Marvin Minsky as an exception, but we need a new guard.
Everything is understanding the nth degree of optimizing Bayesian network inference, usually applied to a very specific toy problem.
Nothing wrong with that research. Not really knocking it.
But where is the research on how a generally intelligent system could choose what to focus its inference-engine attention on. Where is the meta-logic about prioritization and pruning of "trains of thought" depending on success of search and progress and urgency of need to know compared to other concurrent topics. Where are the systems that can posit and explore multiple incrementally variant theories of some aspect of the world, and figure out which theory-variant is a better model of past and present observations. Where is the system that can take in lots of different peoples' writings or sayings about things and synthesize an ontology and figure out whose beliefs are the most promising (truthwise) and relevant. Where is the episodic memory? Where is the emotion-tagging of experiences and important generalizations, and the emotion-guided prioritized recall? Where are the short-term memory blackboards? Where is the "utterance" theory and theories for how to inform and motivate other intelligent agents into execution of a cooperative plan. Where is the AI just for the sheer wonder of trying to put several techniques all together and see what emerges?
The thing about teaching a robot to learn is you need a metric for success and failure.
Human's don't even know what ours is yet! (Though we have theories [wikipedia.org]).
Assuming we want the robots purpose to be making people happy, we haven't even found a way to qualify happiness yet, let alone quantify it.
Psychology is a quagmire, people are diffrent, and we'll need to come from both directions (Psychology and adaptive A.I.) to develop useful heuristic models for A.I.
Considering that I'm just wrapping up a semester of violin methods for a music ed degree, I find this achievement more impressive then building a robot to play any other instrument that I can think of because the violin requires extremely precise movements and pressure. The strings take a fair amount to force to depress, but the instrument itself is rather fragile. Also, to get an even sound out of it, the bow pressure has to constantly and smoothly changed while moving.
In an attempt to prop up my own achievements (I played violin for six years), I agree:-)
But what surprised me about the video was that, while the robot's playing was messy, it appeared to make the same errors and imprecisions that new human violin players make. I don't know if I'd be able to distinguish its playing from a seven-year-old's recital if I had to judge by ear alone.
I don't know anything about this particular robot, but methinx you wouldn't be able to do that with an open-loop sequence of scripted movements. There's definitely some sort of feedback going on. Some sort of force control, perhaps? And I wonder if there's some audio feedback as well to keep it in tune?
Self-awareness is great and all, but I don't think it's going to happen. Whereas there are many interesting challenges in lower-level control, and we do seem to get results there when we work at it.
Very cool, but (Score:4, Insightful)
Robots will never be be able to match the musical abilities of some humans. There are too many tonal subtleties involved, especially on the violin.
That is still very impressive, nonetheless.
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Re:Very cool, but (Score:4, Interesting)
I do believe, eventually, "creativity" will be programmable.
Parent
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However, writing a screenplay or a poem, or picking a new video game setting even is a much more complicated task, as it involves an interaction between formal artistic constraints and definions with a full human experience of the world. Getting to that point wi
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Is it, really?
http://www.norefuge.net/vgng/vgng.html [norefuge.net]
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I further suspect that with ade
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Re:Very cool, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore much of the work that a musician does involves subtle modifications to the rendition that enhance the clarity of the structure. e.g. microtiming deviations in the melody and subtle tonal inflections are a major part of what makes multiple voices traceable to your perception in polyphonic music -- with strict timing it is *much* more difficult to hear out any polyphonic structure. These effects can be measured quantitatively, by the way, but are far too complex to notate in any score intended for humans to read, and for the most part are too complex for an experience musician to be fully conscious of. (It is possible, however, to program a computer to reproduce them using machine learning).
Finally there is in fact an emotional aspect of music that is actually a consequence of some neural structure or other brain process. This is an active research topic. Likely it is a type of synaesthesia (e.g. mint flavor -> cool sensation). In other words the emotional response to music isn't just the performer "making it up", it's sort of short-circuit in the brain of the listener. Since this is basically a universal effect among humans it would be silly to think that the composer wasn't aware of it as well.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Very cool, but (Score:5, Funny)
So now when people call up to complain the robot can play a tiny violin in mock sympathy.
Parent
Re:Very cool, but (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of this demonstration is to show that their robot research has reached a point where they have built a robot with joints that have sufficient degrees of freedom and controllable accuracy that they can do this kind of stunt. You're supposed to look at a robot playing the violin and say "well, if it can play the violin then it can hold a power drill or other tools!"
I'd suggest that maybe they should program the robot to put together some of the crappy furniture you get from Ikea but then people will claim it wasn't cost effective to use a billion dollar robot to do the work of a home handy man or something.
Parent
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[1] Or at least that's what my parents told me afterwards.
Robotic vs. Human ability (Score:4, Interesting)
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While driving?
Re:Robotic vs. Human ability (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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Cynical answer: less, because an elite art community is the one that officially decides these things, and since robots would replace them, they feel threatened, and self-servingly answer "less".
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Pomp and circumstance (Score:4, Funny)
general purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
It's over man; it's over! (Score:5, Funny)
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and then they'll eat our medicines for fuel!
Oh, man, those things are everywhere! I sure wish I could get insurance against a robot attack! But where?
Pretty awesome, because... (Score:2)
Article asks silly questions... (Score:3, Insightful)
Robots perform special tasks better than humans. Surgery is an obvious application, as the summary pointed out. What could be more steady than a hand with hydraulic (or whatever they use) joints. If something is able to play the Violin, it very well may be able to cut you open along a very precise line, remove a cancer/organ/ while the surgeon is sitting on his butt, operating a computer. Surgery is very tiresome from what I understand (I worked in the dept. of orthopaedics in college), and I'd imagine if this is coupled with the proper software and human interface, it would work splendidly for medical purposes.
I'd think the Medical field would be the most interested in this tech. Surgeons could maybe even perform an extra surgery a day ($$$$$$$), and Hospitals usually have big moolah to spend on fancy-schmancy tech.
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They are now. Calculators used to be more expensive than hiring ten people to do the job.
Since we're talking about the distant future, I imagine the thing will eventually be able to fix himself. Or be fixed by his peers.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's pretty much like surgery. Most medicine isn't about making up stuff on the spot or putting "your own riff" on a procedure, it's about carrying out a specific procedure in a specific way. Of course it's adapted to the specific variations in each body, but that's not necessarily so hard. A lot of it is like airline pilots. What they do is very easy, but we respect them because it's so important.
yeah, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:yeah, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Some cars, when parked, ask people to move away if they get too close, so people deliberately get close and try and taunt it.
A new digital media format is released, with a claim to being uncrackable, so it gets cracked very quickly.
So logically, what happens when a robot gets invented that's sole claim to fame is that it won't fall over, even if kicked?
And now we find that even a robot who's sole purpose is to play the violin is going to get kicked too, just to see what happens...
I think i'll invent a line of robots who's sole purpose is to whack you over the head with a cardboard tube if you kick them or other robots over, or just generally abuse technology for your own amusement. Then i'll release version 2 which features a crowbar instead of a cardboard tube. I'll make a fortune selling them as guards for kick-overable robots, vending machines, cars, and DVD's.
Parent
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I think i'll invent a line of robots who's sole purpose is to whack you over the head with a cardboard tube if you kick them or other robots over, or just generally abuse technology for your own amusement. Then i'll release version 2 which features a crowbar instead of a cardboard tube. I'll make a fortune selling them as guards for kick-overable robots, vending machines, cars, and DVD's.
It'll have a hard time protecting anything, being constantly mobbed by people dressed in tight leather straps, handcuffs and hoods with signs reading "Hurt me, I've been bad."
Ah but .... (Score:2)
Interaction interesting? (Score:2)
It's hard enough to find *people* who are interesting. Not impossible, mind you; but there are an awful lot of dolts out there. We'll have to *surpass* the quality of humanity before we produce robots that don't fail the "intesting" QC check at unacceptable levels. It's not a total loss though. The failures might be useful as politicians, supermodels, talk-show hosts, morning DJs, etc.
But can it play... (Score:2)
they should modify it (Score:2, Interesting)
"small" advances (Score:3, Insightful)
Welcome to the world of research. It takes a lot of work to make small advances like this one. The point of research is to solve specific, difficult problems. I'm willing to bet there were other reasons for this project.
Microsoft did this. (Score:2)
Microsoft recently had an AI Santa Claus you could talk to over some service of theirs. It was definitely interesting.
Some other violin players (Score:2)
(a) Violano-virtuoso: Video link [youtube.com] Considering it was made almost 100 years ago, isn't bad! This one used discs to rub against the strings to produce the sound. The Toyota robot uses the back and forth motion of a bow which is definitely more complex.
(b) The violobot: Pic and Text link [blogspot.com] Video Link [google.com] Sucks!
(c) An attempt at Penn State from 10 years ago in a research project Link [psu.edu]. Made mostly noise. Probably abandoned.
Bold research on comprehensive AI has halted (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything is understanding the nth degree of optimizing Bayesian network inference,
usually applied to a very specific toy problem.
Nothing wrong with that research. Not really knocking it.
But where is the research on how a generally intelligent system could choose what to
focus its inference-engine attention on. Where is the meta-logic about prioritization
and pruning of "trains of thought" depending on success of search and progress
and urgency of need to know compared to other concurrent topics.
Where are the systems that can posit and explore multiple incrementally variant theories
of some aspect of the world, and figure out which theory-variant is a better model of
past and present observations. Where is the system that can take in lots of different
peoples' writings or sayings about things and synthesize an ontology and figure out
whose beliefs are the most promising (truthwise) and relevant.
Where is the episodic memory?
Where is the emotion-tagging of experiences and important generalizations,
and the emotion-guided prioritized recall?
Where are the short-term memory blackboards?
Where is the "utterance" theory and theories for how to inform and motivate
other intelligent agents into execution of a cooperative plan.
Where is the AI just for the sheer wonder of trying to put several techniques all
together and see what emerges?
or was it a violin-playing robot? (Score:2)
db
Breaking A Million (Score:2)
After that I'm going to put him to work on Heroin Hero... I WILL CATCH THAT DRAGON!
Learning Robots (Score:2)
Human's don't even know what ours is yet! (Though we have theories [wikipedia.org]).
Assuming we want the robots purpose to be making people happy, we haven't even found a way to qualify happiness yet, let alone quantify it.
Psychology is a quagmire, people are diffrent, and we'll need to come from both directions (Psychology and adaptive A.I.) to develop useful heuristic models for A.I.
Re:Robot's sense of time.. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Way to go!
If you do not like your neighbors in the apartment complex, that robot could be a perfect acquisition for home.
Japanese engineering does not stop amazing me.
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But what surprised me about the video was that, while the robot's playing was messy, it appeared to make the same errors and imprecisions that new human violin players make. I don't know if I'd be able to distinguish its playing from a seven-year-old's recital if I had to judge by ear alone.
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Force control? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know anything about this particular robot, but methinx you wouldn't be able to do that with an open-loop sequence of scripted movements. There's definitely some sort of feedback going on. Some sort of force control, perhaps? And I wonder if there's some audio feedback as well to keep it in tune?
Self-awareness is great and all, but I don't think it's going to happen. Whereas there are many interesting challenges in lower-level control, and we do seem to get results there when we work at it.