The musicians of the Dresden Symphony Orchestra performed on Sunday under the direction of three articulated arms designed in collaboration with the local technical university.
A three-armed robot designed to imitate a human conductor made its debut this weekend in Dresden, Germany, where it was able to perform music composed especially for it.
With its three articulated arms, each equipped with a wand evoking the lightsabers of the film Star Wars – he conducted musicians, very human for their part, during two performances of the Dresden Symphony Orchestra.
The robot was trained to recognize beat time and indicate dynamics, with the different arms able to move independently of each other. He was able to provide insight into his abilities by performing Semiconductor’s Masterpiece (“The Semiconductor Masterpiece”), a work by German composer and pianist Andreas Gundlach, which was commissioned by the orchestra.
The machine works with the human
The robot used its three arms to separately guide the three parts of the orchestra, which would not have been possible with a single human conductor. Speaking at Sunday’s performance, Andreas Gundlach said the idea for the robot was inspired by scientists at the Technical University of Dresden who are developing “cobots », collaborative robots « which are not intended to replace human beings but to work with them “. It then took two years to develop and train the robot conductor in collaboration with the university.
According to the German composer, the process necessary to teach the machine the movements to conduct an orchestra ” [lui a] brings home in a completely new way how wonderful a creation human beings are “. He spoke of the patient work that had to be done to instill in the machine “ aesthetic arm movements that can be well captured by the orchestra ».
Two of the robot’s arms also guided the musicians during the premiere of #crossknot by Wieland Reissmann, another piece involving instruments played simultaneously at different tempos.