An early robotic drummer pales in comparison to the AI versions of today.

Adding AI To The Music Of Life

With this being the season of The Little Drummer Boy with The Harry Simeone Choir, Seeflection.com reviewed two stories on robot drummers and their basic skills.

As we know, electric drums have been around for a while and have gone beyond the original idea of beating on a log. But now AI researchers have added a physical drummer into the mix of electric drums and musical creativity. We found a couple of articles from spectrum.ieee.org dealing with the latest drumming news including a third arm used for drumming, by humans.

Check out the video below and you will see what the fun is all about.

One can imagine Gene Krupa or Buddy Rich rolling over in their graves. Or possibly looking down and saying, “yeah man that’s swinging.” Now if you have ever tried to play along with some of the less expensive digital drummers, you know it is a losing battle for the most part, or at least very restrictive.

Zeyu Ren, a senior hardware engineer at the Xiaomi Robotics Lab, the robot’s developer, explains the whys and wherefores of this robotic beat-keeper:

“There are three reasons why Xiaomi is working on humanoid robots. The first reason is that we are seeing a huge decline in the labor force in China and the world. We are working on replacing the human labor force with humanoid robots even though there is a long way to go. The second reason is that we believe humanoid robots are the most technically challenging of all robot forms. By working on humanoid robots, we can also use this technology to solve problems on other robot forms, such as quadruped robots, robotic arms, and even wheeled robots. The third reason is that Xiaomi wants to be the most technically advanced company in China, and humanoid robots are sexy.”

But creating robotic AI drummers due to a people shortage seemed a little odd.

You will find the link below for the entire interview.

Cybernetic Third Arm Makes Drummers Even More Annoying

I must say the headline of this next article caught me off guard and made me laugh far too hard.

A few years ago, spectrum.ieee.org  wrote about this cybernetic arm that Georgia Tech professor Gil Weinberg developed for a drummer who had his right arm amputated. This was cool enough by itself, but back in 2014, Weinberg was already thinking about the next step:

“…robotic synchronization technology could potentially be used in the future by fully abled humans to control an embedded, mechanical third arm.” THE FUTURE IS NOW, and so are drummers that are 30 percent louder. Hooray?”

Yes, you can attach a third arm to your little drummer boy to make even more noise from his basement practice room.

From the human’s perspective, the drumming arm is programmed to mostly just do its own thing, adapting to whatever you’re doing. It knows where your drums are, where your hands are, and what you’re playing, and if it behaves itself the way it’s supposed to, you really shouldn’t have to think about it. It can improvise all by itself based on the beat and rhythm of what it hears, and even do call and response with you. And there is a video of this third arm in action in the link below.

Again just a great piece about AI being used for fun and profit by creative musicians and their support group of researchers and scientists. It is a wonderful time to be alive and watch the growth of the human race being helped along by entrepreneurs and scientists with great minds and wonderful hearts. As well as a great love of music.

Pa rum pum pum pum. AI and its drum.

read more at spectrum.ieee.org/xiaomi-robot-drummer

also read spectrum.ieee.org/cybernetic-third-arm