Toyota Unveils Violin-Playing Robot 203
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?"
Robot's sense of time.. (Score:1)
Re:Robot's sense of time.. (Score:4, Informative)
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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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Yoda would probably say "technical achievement not master of violin make," but since he died long ago and far, far away, I should probably not think of it in Yoda-isms and stick to "wow, that's pretty impressive for a robot."
Still, I've seen dexterous robots and am a decent cellist, so I know how far it has to go. In some ways it reminds me a bit of listening to an orchestral piece in MIDI - all the parts are there and the piece itself may be amazing
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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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- RG>
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What I find exasperating about this is that they spend thousands, millions on getting this robot to play the violin, then they neglect to code the song correctly. The robot may be actually doing a pretty good job, it just doesn't sound musical! It's like spending millions to train an athlete then only letting him do Morris dancing.
Yup. Cheap guitars are a perfect example. Not a one of 'em is playable, and it's ALWAYS for the same reason - the bridge is in the wrong place so the intonation is horrible. Yet, the effort make a cheap guitar with the bridge in the right place, is exactly the same as it is to do it poorly. So you end up with a kid who wanted to learn guitar, with something that has the strings too high so it hurts, and the bridge too close so it gets sharper the higher up the neck they go. Not so much a guitar, as a
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.
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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 guess I'm more thinking of video games circa 1990 than now, but what combination of factors makes a designer say "World War I fighter planes" or "A plumber running around in some fantasy world" or "You're the mayor of a city."
This is the kind of thing that can be trivially and meaninglessly "simulated" by random selection of terms from a few predefined dictionaries, but that's
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I agree, creativity is just pattern creation and harmonizing frequencies of the patterns.
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I further suspect that with ade
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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).
What human ears hear differ depending on what sounds you grew up with (certain types of plasticity are believed to disappear at approx age 2). So, while a robot may have a disadvantage in not having a specific human ear (and the trained neural system connected to it), it can have the advantage of being able to simulate many of them, and thus know when what it specific to one ear or type of ear, and when it is general.
Eivind.
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.
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What? This is just completely wrong on so many levels. Music from every period has plenty of emotion which is absolutely intrinsically expressed by the composer. The romantic and classical era is particularly full of it. The clue is in the naming of "romantic" for one. Do you think that, say Beethoven, was known for h
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If you're implying that the storage and replication of music is comparable in difficulty to its creation or interpretation, then I can only weep at your ignorance. My computer can show me a scanned image of Monet's Water Lilies, but that doesn't make it an artist.
"Music is all about mathematics."
I'm not sure where you got that idea. Perhaps you're not listening to very good music? Music is, and has always been, a
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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.
Nanotech (Score:2)
Nanotech needs to get involved somehow. That way you could guarantee that what you're hearing is the world's smallest violin, and it's playing just for you.
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.
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What worries me is all this research into making robots that act like humans: having legs and arms, walking upright, etc. Do we really need this? As the Roomba and those automatic grass-cutting robots show, useful ro
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[1] Or at least that's what my parents told me afterwards.
"myopic" mod needed. (Score:2)
By 2050, a robot will read what you wrote, download violin skills and compose and play the most beautiful piece ever, better than any man, just because it can.
Life vs. Robots (Score:2)
Robotic vs. Human ability (Score:4, Interesting)
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While driving?
Re:Robotic vs. Human ability (Score:4, Interesting)
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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)
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n.
1 Dignified or magnificent display; splendor.
2 Vain or ostentatious display. See synonyms at display.
circumstance (sûr'km-stns')
n.
Formal display; ceremony
Seems like the perfect song for unveiling a useless vanity project such as this.
general purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
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And an incremental one at that...Toyota has had a robot that plays the trumpet for quite some time now. And from what I saw at their corporate headquarters, the trumpet-playing robot is better when compared to human trumpet players than this robot is compared to human violin players.
Though this is no doubt due to the fact that the difficult part of playing the violin is the dexterity whereas t
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)
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If their robotic arms can play the violin
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.
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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.
And, eventually the thing will be able to "fix" the 10 humans doing his job less efficiently...
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Toyota's plant in Toyota City produces one automobile every minute. And they have many more plants around the world. Much of the assembly line is already automated, but there's still a lot of steps that require humans. Any advances that Toyota makes that allow them to replace humans with robots that can do a more accurate/faster job will pay for itself when you consider the increased production
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My Roomba does a good job of vacuuming the floor. However, it does an awful job at loading the dishwasher or changing the cat's litter box. How is that "working better"? General purpose, humanoid robots have many advantages. They can go where humans go, use tools that humans use, but they are
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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.
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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)
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they should modify it (Score:2, Interesting)
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"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.
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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.
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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?
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Little steps, of course. When I worked in AI, I used to tell people, First we need to solve the artificial stupidity problem. That will let us do the tasks that everyone does routinely. Intelligence is rare, anyway.
But of course, I agree with you completely. Much science has been passed by in the rush to get useful techniques out of statistical methods. Humans are all about grammar extraction and pragmatics; it's only one level of abstraction beyond where we are now, but we are being very slow in going the
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Now robots exist, they play violins but are too dumb to identify a target or even their own position in a changing environment. Now our Powers That Be realize that AI R&D may very well be the next big th
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For some reason, I read that as *eaten*...
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.
Innovation fueled by xenophobia (Score:2)
Specific tasks / generality (Score:2)
No. While working towards this specific task, I'm sure they will have solved problems that exist more generally in AI/robotics. It's like when Fermat's last theorem was proved - the fact that it was proved itself was relatively insignificant, the problems solved and the maths generated along the way were of huge value to mathematics.
Next special purpose robot... (Score:2)
Toyota succeeds where House On The Rock failed (Score:2)
There is a
anthopomorphic wrestling robot (Score:2)
Stylish hardware, what's the control system like? (Score:2)
I'd probably guess the latter - 'can it play any other piece' and 'can
Ouch ... (Score:2)
Suzuki method? (Score:2)
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Me:"Why yes ociffer, I HAVE been drinking while posting, but I had a good reason!"
Officer:"Sir, you are obviously drunk. Did you not have someone you could call to come get you?"
Me:"Well it's like this: i couldn't walk this drunk, so I tried driving- but my house key
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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.