(Press-News.org) Wedding DJs everywhere should be worried about job security now that a new robot is on the scene.
Shimi, a musical companion developed by Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology, recommends songs, dances to the beat and keeps the music pumping based on listener feedback.
The smartphone-enabled, one-foot-tall robot is billed as an interactive "musical buddy."
"Shimi is designed to change the way that people enjoy and think about their music," said Professor Gil Weinberg, director of Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology and the robot's creator.
He will unveil the robot at tomorrow's Google I/O conference in San Francisco. A band of three Shimi robots will strut its stuff for guests, dancing in sync to music created in the lab and composed according to its movements.
Shimi is essentially a docking station with a "brain" powered by an Android phone. Once docked, the robot gains the sensing and musical generation capabilities of the user's mobile device. In other words, if there's an "app for that," Shimi is ready.
For instance, by using the phone's camera and face-detecting software, the bot can follow a listener around the room and position its "ears," or speakers, for optimal sound. Another recognition feature is based on rhythm and tempo. If the user taps or claps a beat, Shimi analyzes it, scans the phone's musical library and immediately plays the song that best matches the suggestion. Once the music starts, Shimi dances to the rhythm.
"Many people think that robots are limited by their programming instructions," said Music Technology Ph.D. candidate Mason Bretan. "Shimi shows us that robots can be creative and interactive."
Future apps in the works will allow the user to shake their head in disagreement or wave a hand in the air to alert Shimi to skip to the next song or increase/decrease the volume. The robot will also have the capability to recommend new music based on the user's song choices and provide feedback on the music play list.
Weinberg hopes other developers will be inspired to create more apps to expand Shimi's creative and interactive capabilities, allowing the machine to leave the lab and head into the real world.
"I believe that our center is ahead of a revolution that will see more robots in homes, bypassing some of the fears some people have about machines doing everyday functions in their lives," Weinberg said.
Weinberg is in the process of commercializing Shimi through an exclusive licensing agreement with Georgia Tech. A new start-up company, Tovbot, has been formed and Weinberg hopes to make the robot available to consumers by the 2013 holiday season. Shimi was developed in collaboration with the Media Innovation Lab at IDC Herzliya and led by Professor Guy Hoffmann. Entrepreneur Ian Campbell and robot designer Roberto Aimi were also part of the Shimi team.
This is the third robotic musician created by the Center for Music Technology. Haile is a percussionist that can listen to live players, analyze their music in real-time and improvise with music of its own. Shimon is an interactive marimba player.
"If robots are going to arrive in homes, we think that they will be these kind of machines - small, entertaining and fun," Weinberg said. "They will enhance your life and pave the way for more sophisticated service robots in our lives."
###
This project is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Award Number HCC-1017169). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.
Musical robot companion enhances listener experience
2012-06-27
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Lab-on-a-chip detects trace levels of toxic vapors in homes near Utah Air Force Base
2012-06-27
ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A lab-on-a-chip technology that measures trace amounts of air contaminants in homes was successfully field-tested by researchers at the University of Michigan.
Even in the presence of 50 other indoor air contaminants, the U-M-built microsystem found levels of the targeted contaminant so low that it would be analogous to finding a particular silver dollar in a roll stretching from Detroit to Salt Lake City.
"This is the first (known) study of its kind," said Ted Zellers, professor in the U-M School of Public Health and the Department of Chemistry, ...
NASA satellite spots newborn Tropical Depression Doksuri in W. Pacific
2012-06-27
Another tropical depression was born in the western North Pacific, and NASA's Terra satellite captured an infrared image of the newborn cyclone. Tropical depression Doksuri, known in the Philippines as Dindo, was born during the early hours of June 26, 2012 in the western North Pacific Ocean.
The Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument onboard NASA's Terra satellite as captured an infrared image of the newborn storm on June 26 at 0228 UTC. The image revealed higher thunderstorms around the center of Tropical Depression Doksuri that were casting shadows on ...
NASA satellites see wildfires across Colorado
2012-06-27
Nearly half of the United States' airborne fire suppression equipment was operating over Colorado on June 25, 2012, CNN reported, as tens of thousands of acres burned. Fires raged in southwestern Colorado, northeastern Colorado, and multiple locations in between.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image on June 23, 2012. Red outlines approximate the locations of actively burning fires. The High Park and Weber Fires produced the largest plumes of smoke.
The High Park Fire continued to burn west ...
UMass Medical School researchers discover a new role for RNAi
2012-06-27
WORCESTER, MA – Organisms employ a fascinating array of strategies to identify and restrain invasive pieces of foreign DNA, such as those introduced by viruses. For example, many viruses produce double-stranded (ds)RNA during their life cycle and the RNA interference (RNAi) mechanism is thought to recognize this structural feature to initiate a silencing response.
Now, UMass Medical School researchers have identified a mechanism related to RNAi that scans for intruders not by recognizing dsRNA or some other aberrant feature of the foreign sequence, but rather by comparing ...
NASA's Hubble spots rare gravitational arc from distant, hefty galaxy cluster
2012-06-27
Seeing is believing, except when you don't believe what you see.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found a puzzling arc of light behind an extremely massive cluster of galaxies residing 10 billion light-years away. The galactic grouping, discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, was observed when the universe was roughly a quarter of its current age of 13.7 billion years. The giant arc is the stretched shape of a more distant galaxy whose light is distorted by the monster cluster's powerful gravity, an effect called gravitational lensing.
The ...
New mouse model helps explain gene discovery in congenital heart disease
2012-06-27
Scientists now have clues to how a gene mutation discovered in families affected with congenital heart disease leads to underdevelopment of the walls that separate the heart into four chambers. A Nationwide Children's Hospital study appearing in PLoS Genetics suggests that abnormal development of heart cells during embryogenesis may be to blame.
When babies are born with a hole in their heart (either between the upper or lower chambers), they have a septal defect, the most common form of congenital heart disease. Although it's not clear what causes all septal defects, ...
Novel radiation therapy safely treats prostate cancer and lowers the risk of recurrence
2012-06-27
Richmond, Va. (June 22, 2012) – A recent Phase I/II clinical trial has shown that a new combination of radiation therapies developed at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center escalates radiation doses to safely and effectively treat prostate cancer and lower the risk of recurrence with minimal radiation exposure to nearby healthy tissue and organs.
Recently published in the journal Brachytherapy, a novel treatment protocol designed by Michael Hagan, M.D., Ph.D., radiation oncologist at VCU Massey Cancer Center, that combines intensity-modulated radiation ...
New treatment protocol extends survival in some cases of once inoperable pancreatic cancer
2012-06-27
Chicago (June 27, 2012, 12:01 am [CDT]): Investigators at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, have reported on a new approach to treating previously inoperable complex pancreatic adenocarcinoma that has significantly increased long-term survival for some patients. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is one of the most devastating forms of pancreatic cancer with survival rates of only 5 percent at five years. Surgical removal of these tumors offers a chance for cure, but it is estimated that only about 20 percent of patients can undergo this treatment. The ...
Obese appendectomy patients have fewer complications with minimally invasive operations
2012-06-27
Chicago (June 27, 2012, 12:01 am [CDT]): Obese patients who need to have their appendixes removed fare better after a minimally invasive surgical procedure rather than an open operation, according to a new study published in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
While the traditional open operation (appendectomy) and minimally invasive procedure (laparoscopic appendectomy) are known to have similar outcomes for people of normal weight, surgeons at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine found that obese patients had ...
Exercise is key in the fight against Alzheimer's disease
2012-06-27
In a recent Journal of Biological Chemistry "Paper of the Week," research led by Ayae Kinoshita at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan reveals the benefits of exercise in combating Alzheimer's disease.
The most common cause of dementia, Alzheimer's disease results in the loss of cognitive faculty. In the majority of cases, Alzheimer's disease occurs after age 65, and factors such as diet and exercise appear to play a role in its development, with high-fat diets as a risk factor.
Kinoshita's research compared the effects of 1) diet control, ...