Music expression with a robot manipulator
This video shows how the active compliant control capabilities of a robotic arm can be exploited as an artistic tool for music composition. Such haptic interfaces offers interesting possibilities of performer-instrument interaction for musical expression. These new musical instruments can precisely modulate the haptic feedback, and map it to a sonic output, thus offering new artistic content creation possibilities. The robotic arm is used here as a bidirectional interface for musical expression, actively modifying the compliant control strategy to create a bind between gestural input and music output. The user can define recursive modulations of music parameters by grasping and gradually refining periodic movements on a gravity-compensated robot manipulator. The robot learns on-line the new desired trajectory, increasing its stiffness as the modulation refinement proceeds.