Mechatronics-Driven Musical Expressivity for Robotic Percussionists
This addresses the challenge of enhancing musical performance for robotic musicians, offering incremental improvements over existing solenoid-based systems.
The authors tackled the problem of musical expressivity in robotic percussionists by implementing Brushless Direct Current motors in a robotic marimba player, resulting in improved dynamic range, faster striking speed, and subjective expressivity comparable to humans.
Musical expressivity is an important aspect of musical performance for humans as well as robotic musicians. We present a novel mechatronics-driven implementation of Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) motors in a robotic marimba player, named Shimon, designed to improve speed, dynamic range (loudness), and ultimately perceived musical expressivity in comparison to state-of-the-art robotic percussionist actuators. In an objective test of dynamic range, we find that our implementation provides wider and more consistent dynamic range response in comparison with solenoid-based robotic percussionists. Our implementation also outperforms both solenoid and human marimba players in striking speed. In a subjective listening test measuring musical expressivity, our system performs significantly better than a solenoid-based system and is statistically indistinguishable from human performers.