When it comes to robot musicians, talent runs the gamut about as much as it does for humans.
From the bizarre double-armed machine that made a guest appearance in Sweden last fall when it played cello with the Malmo Symphony Orchestra to the poorly-disguised, tunic-wearing humanoid robot seen playing keytar at a festival in China, we've seen some incredible examples of robotic artistry recently.
Fortunately, considering a recent video of a simulation showing a humanoid robot drummer, unimaginatively named "Robot Drummer," teaching himself how to hit the skins, the androids are unlikely to replace human musicians any time soon.
As one of Robot Drummer's videos shows, he seems to get the idea of Linkin Park's hit "In The End" down, but he's not exactly hitting those notes.
Commentators on YouTube were even less kind, calling the robot's rendition an "abomination."
"My first band had a drummer this bad once, too," another user wrote.
As Tech Xplore reports, this not-so-rhythmic bot is the brainchild of Asad Ali Shahid, a mechanical engineer at the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Italy who, along with his colleagues, wanted to see if robots could progressively learn a creative task like playing an instrument.
"The idea for Robot Drummer actually emerged from a spontaneous conversation over coffee with my co-author, Loris Roveda," Shahid, first author of a not-yet-peer-reviewed paper on the simulation, told Tech Xplore. "We were discussing how humanoid robots have become increasingly capable at a wide range of tasks, but rarely engage in creative and expressive domains. That raised a fascinating question: what if a humanoid robot could take on a creative role, like performing music?"
"Drumming seemed like a perfect frontier," he continued, "as it's rhythmic, physical, and requires rapid coordination across limbs."
Using a simulation of Unitree's G1 humanoid robot — the same diminutive model we saw getting into adorable boxing matches earlier this summer — Shahid and his colleagues trained a machine learning algorithm to teach Robot Drummer how to play real-life songs.
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