robots as musical instruments

Robots as musical instruments is an experiment at Everyday Robots as part of Catie’s artistic residency.

From the blog post: “Over the past few months, my teammates and I have been working on an experiment that transforms the robots from everyday physical tools to musical instruments. We map the joint velocities of the robot onto musical tracks, so the robot makes music while it moves - something akin to a ‘music mode’. Each joint is mapped to a different sound - for example, the robot’s base will make a different sound than its wrist joint. This project was inspired by a set of questions around the relationship between dance and music: so often, music is played and robots dance to it, but what if the robot itself could become the musical instrument? What if the movement could dictate the music, rather than the other way around? It is an artistic human-robot-interaction experiment and is the first of several novel artistic projects we’re experimenting with on our robots.”