Kei Suefuji

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC FLUTIST ROBOT AT WASEDA UNIVERSITY

The development of the flutist robot at Waseda University since 1990 has enabled a better understanding of the motor control functions required for playing the flute. Moreover, it has introduced novel ways of interaction between human beings and humanoid robots such as: performing a musical score together in real time and transferring skills to flutist beginners. In this paper, the development of the Waseda Flutist Robot No. 4 Refined (WF-4R) is presented. The mechanical design of the components of the robot and the control architecture are detailed. In order to efficiently control and coordinate the motion of each of the simulated organs of the robot, an algorithm was proposed to extract the features required to perform a score based on human performance. This algorithm was divided into two phases: sound calibration and music score performance. Finally, an experimental setup was done to verify the effectiveness of each of the phases by analyzing the time and frequency domain responses from recordings of the robot performances. The WF-4R is able to perform from musical scores quite similar to human.

Implementation of Expressive Performance Rules on the WF-4RIII by modeling a professional flutist performance using NN

In this paper, the methodology for automatically generating an expressive performance on the anthropomorphic flutist robot is detailed. A feed-forward network trained with the error back-propagation algorithm was implemented to model the performances expressiveness of a professional flutist. In particular, the note duration and vibrato were considered as performance rules (sources of variation) to enhance the robots performance expressiveness. From the mechanical point of view, the vibrato and lung systems were re-designed to effectively control the proposed music performance rules. An experimental setup was proposed to verify the effectiveness of generating a new score with expressiveness from a model created based on the performance of a professional flutist. As a result, the flutist robot was able of automatically producing an expressive performance similar to the human one from a nominal score.

Improvements of the sound perception processing of the anthropomorphic flutist robot (WF-4R) to effectively interact with humans

The development of the anthropomorphic flutist robot, at Waseda University, has demonstrated how the robot can communicate with humans at emotional level by performing musical scores with expressiveness and by transferring basic skills from robot to beginners. However, the interaction among humans is characterized by a highly interactive process of analyzing and responding to incoming stimuli from the partner. Even that flutist robot has successfully imitated the flute playing quite similar to human performance; the way of processing and analyzing the music as human does still requires further improvements. In this paper, we would describe how we implemented a human like sound processing system to enable robot to interact with humans at the same level of perception. An experimental setup was done to verify the validity of the developed system.

The anthropomorphic flutist robot WF-4R: from mechanical to perceptual improvements

One of the earliest motivations for developing humanoid robots centered on creating robots that may coexist with humans in environments created for human beings. For several years, at Waseda University, the development of the anthropomorphic flutist player has been focused on improving the musical interaction between the human and the robot to clarify the human flute playing and to propose novel assisted music teaching tools. In this paper, a new architecture for autonomously transferring skills from robot to human using the flutist robot is introduced. Furthermore, the new version of the flutist robot, the WF-4R (Waseda Flutist No.4 Refined) is presented; where the arm system was added to assure the positioning accuracy of the flute and the development of a melody recognition system to enable the robot to interact with students at the same logical level of perception. An experimental setup has been performed in order to verify the effectiveness of both mechanical and perceptual systems. As a result, using the arms system, we have assured the repetitiveness of the flute positioning. Furthermore, the implemented music recognition system was able to recognize the melody of flutist players (an overall recognition rate of 90%); demonstrating that HMM (usually used for speech recognition) is also effective for flute melody identification.

The mechanical improvements of the anthropomorphic flutist robot WF-4RII to increas the sound clarity and to enhance the interactivity with humans

The development of the anthropomorphic flutist robot, at Waseda University, has focused on imitating the human flute playing by mechanically reproducing the organs involved during such activity. Our research aims in understanding several aspects of the human flute playing: clarifying the human motor control while performing skillful activities, enabling robots to express ideas and feelings in musical terms and proposing new ways of interaction between the human and the robot. In this paper the new version of the flutist robot, the Waseda Flutist Robot No. 4 Refined II, is presented. The improvements of the mechanical system in order to improve the sound clarity of the robot’s performance and to enhance the interaction with humans are described. A set of experiments were carried out to verify the effectiveness of the mechanical components. As a result, the robot is able of performing a musical score with more clarity and furthermore, the robot can interact with humans more natural using the vision system.

Imitating the human flute playing by the WF-4RII: Mechanical, perceptual and performance control systems

In this paper, the main improvements of the mechanical, perceptual and performance control systems, implemented on the Waseda Flutist Robot No.4 Refined II, are presented. Each of the systems of the flutist robot has been designed in order to imitate as near as possible the skills displayed by human during the flute performance; as a mean for clarifying the internal processes of the human motor control to perform skillful activities, enabling the robot to express ideas/feelings in musical terms, and proposing new ways of interaction between the human and the robot. A set of experiments were proposed to verify the effectiveness of the perceptual system as wells as the proposed volume control algorithm implemented on this robot. As a result, the robot has demonstrated to be able of recognizing automatically melodies from the performance of flutist beginners, detecting and tracking the presence of a human face and performing with more expressiveness by controlling the sound volume