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Robotics It's funny. Laugh.

Humanoid Robot Conducts Beethoven Symphony 248

Posted by Hemos from the moving-forward dept.
me98411 writes "New Scientist is running a front page article about the Sony's QRIO bot [QRIO= Quest for Curiosity] successfully conducted an entire orchestra at the Tokyo Philharmonic Society. An impressive footage of the four bots performing a dance routine can be seen here [wmv format]"
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Humanoid Robot Conducts Beethoven Symphony More

Humanoid Robot Conducts Beethoven Symphony

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  • The Great Maestro... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Monday April 05, 2004 @07:46PM (#8774848) Homepage Journal
    In the not so distant future:
    "Oh swell, we'll be conducted by #011278-TY-42 again, always has to have a flair for the dramatic. Too bad old #006273-UO-88 got a virus and it addled his core, he may have had a lazy servo or two, but he was easy to follow."

  • Still waiting (Score:3, Funny)

    by An-Unnecessarily-Lon ( 761026 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @07:49PM (#8774868) Journal
    On my hotsex fembot... Not that I really need one per say....

  • grace (Score:5, Funny)

    by squashed ( 664265 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @07:51PM (#8774887)
    Successfully conducted?

    Right, with all the grace of a metronome.

    • Re:grace (Score:3, Funny)

      by gkuz ( 706134 )
      ...and the warmth of von Karajan...

    • Re:grace (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Talinom ( 243100 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @07:57PM (#8774954) Homepage Journal
      Yup.

      Did it lean toward the section that was to be prominent in the next passage? Did it succeed in getting the attention of the one section (and only that section) that was dragging down the temp? How about deciding that with the particular acoustics at the venue being what they were that the flute section was a bit piercing and decide to have them play a bit quiter?

      Didn't think so.

      • Re:grace (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Was the whole thing available for download? Did you watch it all?
    • From this page [mainichi.co.jp]:

      "QRIO has even been programmed to conduct musical orchestras. Recently, the robot was controlled remotely by computer to conduct the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra during a performance at Tokyo Opera City."

      Remote control... doesn't exactly sound autonomous.
      • It said it was controlled remotely by computer... Are they implying that they had a guy sitting at a computer, or that they had a beefier computer than whatever is in this robots skull (chest?) doing the actual computation? Having a remote mainframe do the thinking for a robot might actually be a good idea, it'd eliminate some weight, decrease energy consumption and possibly allow the unit access to more sensory data than what it takes with it.
        • Either way it's still just a lot of gee-whiz, showoff stuff. The autonomous-vehicle contest a couple of weeks ago, and the annual firefighting robot competition, show us machines that are (as yet) less successful, but FAR more impressive even when they fail.

    • Re:grace (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Senor_Pedo ( 648805 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @08:28PM (#8775208)
      So true. By the time the orchestra is on stage performing the piece, anyone could stand up there and wave their arms and the music would be pretty good. The real mark of a good conductor is how he prepares the orchestra in rehersal. That is where the artistic vision comes across. Once he demonstrates his idea of how the piece should sound, he can conduct with subtle nuances that are easily understood by the orchestra. But only with good preparation is that possible.
      • Your right in one sense but like another poster mentioned.. Each venue is different, which means different acoustics, which means different sections may have to play quieter, louder, etc. Alot of the pieces orchestra's play are complex as well and even tho they are skilled muscians they may still need direction. Some sections may be rushing or dragging the piece along... There are many things you need a conductor for, otherwise you wouldn't see conductors during performances. They'd be like any other st
        • There are concert ensembles which perform without a conductor. They work out the kinks of the performance team-wise, somehow.
          • Not sure how because when your sitting in a concert band its hard to hear other sections. Thats why you have the conductor up there. I was a trumpet player and with a couple trumpets sitting behind your head you don't hear much of anything else. :)
      • By the time the orchestra is on stage performing the piece, anyone could stand up there and wave their arms and the music would be pretty good.

        Well, you're partly right about that. In theory, the concertmaster should be able to lead the orchestra. Once in high school (we had a REALLY FUCKING GOOD orchestra and jazz band; the school itself sucked) the conductor got called down to the main office during rehearsal. He just told us to hold tight. After about a minute of uncomfortable boredom, the concertm

  • The Three Laws of Robotics (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05, 2004 @07:51PM (#8774890)
    Lets hope Sony has designed "The Three Laws of Robotics" into these little bots.

    Surely this would stop them from forming their own boy bands, or should I say Robo Bands.....

    "Back street roboz"
  • I would expect them to make the first music 'bot sing "....Marvin, I love you"
  • That's nothing. I've seen an entire orchestra of automatons (automata?) at "The House on the Rock" [teammichaelson.com] in Wisconsin. You put a quarter in a slot, and the life-size orchestra plays for a while.

  • That poor robot... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Saeger ( 456549 ) <farrellj@g m a il.com> on Monday April 05, 2004 @07:52PM (#8774905) Homepage
    With a name like "QUEERIO", that poor robot is going to get teased by all the other macho hetero bots until one day it just *snaps* and takes over the world Columbine-style. That's how it happens you know.

    --

    • Remember the Simpson's episode where Homer had to clear out his garage to make room for his tavern?

      Remember him tossing the robot after the robot looks imploringly at Homer and says "Father give me legs"?

      Yes, I thought you might.

  • I can just imagine. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Tap

    <buffering....>

    Tap

    <buffering....>

    Tap

    <buffering....>

    and so on.
    • Tap
      [buffering....]
      Tap
      [buffering....]
      Tap
      [buffering....]

      Only because it's on a slow broadband link suffering a DDoS attack while the kid up the block is downloading The RIAA's Greatest Hits (literally) over the same cable loop.

  • robot wars (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What, if any, development companies in the US are working on robots? It seems like all of the news is about sony, honda, and toyota developing these things. Someone here needs to step up or we'll be left out of the market.

    • Re:robot wars (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DragonMagic ( 170846 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @08:01PM (#8775004) Homepage
      Development costs and research eat up too much money, plus the fact that robots at this point have mostly an industrial market, rather than a consumer market.

      Japanese firms have constantly pushed money into development of technology that is a loss-maker early on, until its adaption is widespread and cost-effective. The US companies have stockholders to appease, and long-term profits are hardly ever in their best interests.

      On the plus side, after the robotics are easier to make and have far-reaching capabilities, American companies will license or purchase them from the Japanese companies and we'll still have them.
    • I see individuals on techtv quite frequently that claim to build robots [techtv.com]. No I don't mean robot wars [techtv.com] (a.k.a. attack of the killer radio controlled car).

      I can't think of any big companies making them. In the US, it seems to be an underground geek/research scene. However, I'm pretty certain the US Army, et al, are actively working on robots for military purposes. That means it will probably one day end up with a consumer applications.
      • Hmmm, U.S. companies making robots. Unimation? Cincinnati Milacron? I'm sure I left out a bunch of others. They don't make flashy public-spectacle robots, so they're a bit harder to remember.

    • Re:robot wars (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ron_ivi ( 607351 )
      Sure there are; but many of the US robotic projects are focused on military [why-war.com] applications because that's where the money is in the states.

      For example, this DARPA initiative on Dynamic Mobility [darpa.mil] "--biologically inspired appendages to demonstrate multifunctional, dynamic, energy efficient and autonomous locomotion to enable revolutionary mobility capabilities such as running over multiple terrains, climbing (trees, cliffs, cave walls), jumping and leaping, and manipulating the world with an appendage in tas

    • Hey, I can promise you that IBM will not take this lying down nor will Intel or Microsoft.

      Don't discount the power of an armload of patents and a braintrust on tap.

      My .02 but I think the bots are way cool.

  • Ha! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sacarino ( 619753 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @07:56PM (#8774937) Homepage
    Those little bastards dance better than I do...
  • QRIO= Quest for Curiosity

    What? How? Maybe I'm ignorant, or maybe this is off-topic. Kinda threw me though.

  • Humans vrs Robots (Score:3, Funny)

    by mpcarlos ( 633076 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @07:56PM (#8774951)
    I think humans can do better "the robot" dance than QRIO can do human dance... So 1 point to humans... but in ohter hand, don't think much of us here at ./ can dance, so lets give QRIO 1 point too..
  • This just isn't impressive. At least not any more than a robot that puts a car together. It's just assigning a task and pressing play. Could it figure out what to do if the music was off because someone messed up or would it just keep right on until it finished? That might be a little more impressive because it'd have to recognize a series of notes and timing.

    Leave it up to the Japanese to have the robots dancing. Bubble gum culture at it's finest.

    • Re:Not Impressive (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rasafras ( 637995 ) <tamas.pha@jhu@edu> on Monday April 05, 2004 @08:02PM (#8775013) Homepage
      Somebody feels a little insecure about their rhythm.... :-)

      The goal was not for the robot to be the conductor - everybody knows humans are better. In fact, the robot's motion was most likely recorded from a human. The goal is to show that they can, to demonstrate the variety of things the robots can do (physically, for now). I certainly think it's a little less specialized than building a car.

  • Obligatory Styx Quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by The_Rippa ( 181699 ) * on Monday April 05, 2004 @07:58PM (#8774965)
    Domo arigato, Conductor Roboto.
    • Japanese robots. Beethoven. Did anyone else go to a _really_ scary mental place?

      Personally, this triggered a chain of thoughts that ended with a fifty-mile-high girl reducing everyone in the world to orange goo, while Unit 01 waved around the Lance of Longinus as a conductor's baton and the Mass Production Evangelions played the strings. Weird.

  • What's the big deal? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by benchbri ( 764527 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @07:59PM (#8774974)

    Not to say that this isn't a small achievement - I'll respect any company that can build a metre tall robot with fully articulated limbs and fingers, a robot that can break dance, throw a ball, anything like that. These are all goals homebrew robot builders could only imagine in their dreams.

    But if Sony is commited to using these robots as assistants for the elderly, or even be able to walk my dog, it needs a brain.

    I'm not talking about AI here; The'll need to be able to recognize faces, respond to commands, and do daily autonomous tasks (water a house plant, feed the cat, get the paper), at least as well enough to pass a Turing-like test to be useful.

    So far, the only thing I've seen the QIRO do is dance. Once they demonstrate some functionality, I'll be intrested. Now it's just a toy.

    • Yet another hasty response by someone who didn't rtfa. If you read the technology behind QRIO on Sony's website, you'll see that it can walk on uneven and slanted ground, walk with it's center of balance not always over its feet, recognize its location, get up after falling (which it only does when pushed, and even then it recognizes that it is falling and takes measures to protect itself), and then it gets cool. QRIO has voice recognition, face recognition, can carry on conversations and learn new words, a
      • Okay, *now* I'm impressed, but this makes me wonder all the more, why waste all that capability on reproducing some human conductor's motions?

        I still think Shakey is more impressive, and he's old enough to have a whole brood of grandrobots by now.
    • I'm not talking about AI here; The'll need to be able to recognize faces, respond to commands, and do daily autonomous tasks (water a house plant, feed the cat, get the paper), at least as well enough to pass a Turing-like test to be useful.
      Explain to me how you're not talking about AI here.
    • Doesn't it have to be able to move easily without falling down before it can do tasks like watering plants, feeding cats, and getting the paper?

      Baby steps.

      Everyone was agape when the first robots walked, then walked up stairs, etc. Now we have ones that can dance reasonably well. We can't jump right into full human-replacement mode just yet.
    • is that these robots can move like humans. That's the first step in the big picture. The brain is being developed independently but in conjunction.

      With wireless high speed network connections the fact that these robots can move so well is sufficient. A high power computer system could take up an entire closet and feed commands to the robot that doesn't actually have to think itself. It just needs to relay sensory information to the big giant brain in the closet and it can relay back motion/speech comma
  • Who thought of this? Don't you geeks realize that we're not getting the chicks as it is because we can't dance and then you go invent a robot that dances better than us. You know you're not going to be able to send this robot to a nightclub to pick 'em up for you.

    Jeepers.

    How about inventing a robot that beats up jocks instead?

    On the other hand I'd love to see this robot take on a Dance Dance Revolution machine.

    John.
    • Geeky girls don't go to night clubs, you know. My last date I met at chess club. She's pretty cool and somewhat attractive to boot. Further research is indeed required.
    • I can imagine it now...

      So, wanna night with my owner baby?

      (gets strange look)

      If that's the case, then how about this?

      (whips out robotic phallus...)

      later...

      "Oh yes, yes!" as heard in other room. "Damn robot, I spent all that money and time on him, and for what?!"

  • Damn Robots... (Score:3, Funny)

    by spence2680 ( 667507 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @08:00PM (#8774996)
    Dance better than I do! Crap!! I'll be extra impressed when the robots can do DDR. http://www.ddrfreak.com/

  • Damnit! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Monday April 05, 2004 @08:00PM (#8774997)
    I just sent in my application to conducting school. By the time I graduate, all the conducting jobs will be outsourced to robots. Oh well, I guess we should have all seen it coming, much like what happend to assembly and manufacturing plants in the 80s.
    • This is only partly funny. There's a company marketing a "virtual orchestra" that's supposed to emulate a real orchestra using very high quality samplings. (To which every real musician who's heard about it has said "BULLSHIT.") The technology has been used in some opera/musical productions in NYC; the unions seem to have killed it there [bbc.co.uk] for now.
  • I saw this a long time ago. Where did I find it?

    Slashdot. This is a dupe from over a month ago.

  • I don't know which is more impressive (Score:5, Funny)

    by way2trivial ( 601132 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @08:07PM (#8775065) Homepage Journal
    the video, or the fact that it still loaded for me near instantly a full 20 minutes after it was posted to slash

  • I'll be impressed when robots like these can demonstrate Aikido: at the least, they should take ukemi (falls) gracefully and come out dancing. When I can throw it across the room and it can "walk the walk" we will have droids capable of autonomous operation.

  • Question (Score:4, Funny)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @08:15PM (#8775118)
    ""New Scientist is running a front page article about the Sony's QRIO bot [QRIO= Quest for Curiosity] successfully conducted an entire orchestra at the Tokyo Philharmonic Society."

    How is this different from, say, a metronome?

  • Lawrence Welk Digitized (Score:5, Funny)

    by thirty2bit ( 685528 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @08:16PM (#8775138)
    And a 01 and a 10 and a 11....

  • real bad application (Score:2, Insightful)

    by chochos ( 700687 )
    This is a very bad application of robot technology. A musical director has to have a lot of temper, or the musicians won't respect him and follow him. Plus there are a lot of other things that he has to be good at, some of which I don't think can be implemented in software. Too many variables.
    Having a human director conduct an orchestra of robots wouldn't be good, either; the musicians have to feel the music and infuse some passion into the execution, something I doubt can be simulated with a robot.
    Wasn't t
    • Wasn't the whole idea of having robots to put them to work in incredibly boring and repetitive tasks

      Agreed. They should be working on robotic audience members so we don't have to sit through a symphony.

  • Perfection (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Kjeks ( 259643 )
    It's both fascinating and scary to watch how precisely and accurate robots can move nowadays.
    But what will happen in a few years when the military develops an army of robots?
    Imagine a dead accurate killer robot that follows all orders blindly and never misses a single bullet.
  • So when can I get a team of these to write our company's mission critical software for me? Then I wouldn't have to pay these pesky overpaid engineers at all. They're so unpredictable.

    What I'm really looking forward to is when I can get a team of Indian made robots to write the code for me. Then it'll be predictable AND cheap.

  • jaw-dropping.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by moviepig.com ( 745183 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @08:42PM (#8775305)
    I may be naive, but I thought the robot-dance footage was astonishing.

    My immediate reaction was that it was CGI movie fakery. In fact, many moviegoers think the "perfect" motion of CGI objects is not merely unrealistic but also physically impossible.

    Watch this footage, and think again.

    • What's actually a little more amazing is that their motion is not actually perfect and synchronized exactly. They are time synchronized, I'm sure, but they have to figure out balance and rates of movement (and a billion other things I'm sure) independent of each other and then make it all happen on cue.

    • Re:jaw-dropping.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by lommer ( 566164 )
      Yeah, I thought the dance was pretty amazing - I had no idea that we'd come that far in robotics. However, I watched it a few times and if you focus on the feet, you realize that they're mostly just waving their arms, and their feet are making very small steps left, forward, turning, etc. The armwaving is considerably easier to manage in robotics, unless it's standing on one foot (notice that the robots didn't wave their arms much when they did that little demo of standing on one foot (mind you, I know plen

  • Whatev' (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nfotxn ( 519715 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @08:44PM (#8775319) Journal
    What a great PR stunt. Anyone who has ever played in a professional ensemble knows that a rehearsed orchestra can conduct itself almost flawlessly.

    • Re:Whatev' (Score:3, Informative)

      by van der Rohe ( 460708 )

      Anyone who has ever played in a professional ensemble knows that a rehearsed orchestra can conduct itself almost flawlessly.

      Provided that the music being played is strictly metronomic and from the common practice period. In fact, anything later than say, middle period Beethoven would be a disaster without a conductor.

      The problem is that music in the High Classical period and after started to use rubato, fermatas, and numerous tempo changes. 80+ people on stage simply can't coordinate that without a l

      • I said "well rehearsed" not "without a conductor all together" in respect to having a robotic conductor at performance time if the ensemble has rehearsed beforehand with a conductor. I was trying to expose this as the PR stunt that it obviously is. I wasn't trying disqualifiy the importance of a skilled conductor in any way whatsoever.
  • ... to build and maintain those robots!

    (simpsons writers had it right)
  • I think this is more of a statement about how easy a conductor's job is rather than how far robotics have progressed.
  • Slashdot is at the blazing from of news.. this is an OLD story!!!

  • How are you not impressed... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by quantax ( 12175 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @09:46PM (#8775701) Homepage
    I really don't understand why people are unimpressed with the dancing robots. Even if theyre programmed to do the dance routine, its still damn impressive. I'm not sure how familiar people are with bipedal movement, but its not as simple as you think; it takes a fairly complex series of motions to keep you balanced as you move, especially when walking or running. One thing you'll notice with the robots is that that balance every motion: this is not an easy feat, especially with the relative smoothness with which they are moving around. So once more, getting robots to do robotic things is easy (robotic arm that welds stuff), where as getting a robot to mimic life (bipedal walking around) and people is most definitely difficult, forget whatever you've seen in Hollywood.
  • Whatever server and pipe they have, they need to donate it to Slashdot so we can, in turn, donate it to the sites that get farked! 300k from JAPAN?

    It's a preview of tomorrow, my friends.
  • I stuck a robot up my pussy.

    I now predict SKYNET will swoop in with Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries booming forth.
  • Chucke E. Cheese will never be the same again.
  • The two astounding accomplishments the article talks about are its look and sense of balance. I'm not at all impressed by the "look". The parts of the look that aren't engineered byproducts of function or construction seem to be design survey results of what a robot is expected to look like. Perhaps a Sony marketing group put in a lot of research into such a survey but it personally doesn't interest me.

    The sense of balance does seem to be a well engineered accomplishment that they should be given high kudo
  • Anybody else think of the Penny Aracde Dancing Robot?

    http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003- 11 -03&res=l

    http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004- 03 -01

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