Video: Toyota's robo-quartet makes Kerouac cry
By Thomas Ricker 
posted May 16th 2008 3:54AM
posted May 16th 2008 3:54AM
After watching Honda's Asimo conduct the Detroit Symphony, Toyota's distressed team of robots hopped a box car with a jug of wine and wound up leaning in and kicking out a clear harmonic cry to some corporate goons in Japan. The band consists of a couple repurposed DJ Robots and new Partner Robots. While laudable, there's not enough ecstasy for us, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music... not enough night. Video after the break, Jack.
They can play those instruments better than me, so it's something... when they start playing Bass Guitar, let me know.
eh its not bass but close enough
http://www.engadget.com/2005/07/08/the-crazy-j-guitar-playing-robot/
Ooh! And they're playing LUPIN III'rd theme song!
Yeah, how cool is that. I was kinda expecting them to play the Cantina song from Star Wars Episode 4. That would be cool
They should have them play Rockband
So they have buzzing lips and airflow?? cool
Exactly. They're not even moving their fingers to key the different notes. This is robot lip-sync, not robot performance.
The drummer is the only one who might even possibly be playing music, the rest are robto air-guitarists with worse instruments.
There's something really wrong about watching robots with no mouths play wind instruments.
Actually, in the video, they are moving their fingers to key the different notes.
If Jack wasn't dead, he'd cry. In fact, looking around the world, he'd be too busy crying about other stuff than to even notice this travesty. Sometimes, you just cannot take it all in.
On the other hand, I think Burroughs would like this. Those bots would have run on certain human liquids and feature some interesting orifices, bristling with razorblades and needles, but he'd like them.
Neat... However I can't imagine these ever replacing real performers or contributing anything useful to robotics except for replacing those horribly creepy animatronic animals at Chuck E. Cheese. At least it gives us a hint at the future of design of electronics design, in the future everything electronic will be white and will glow blue. Cause, ya know, it looks cool.
i saw this at chuck e cheese's before it was great!
that was one short ass video, is that Lupin III?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oQSe4Z1cH4E
This isn't that exciting - these Toyota robots were playing musical instruments YEARS AGO on public display at the World Expo in Nagoya in 2005.... there they made up for the lack of robot emotion and action by an over zealous human announcer.
Damn.... When I first saw the photo I thought they were holding weapons.
I for one welcome our new robot overlords!
That's pretty cool. If a composer could control an ensemble of these, that would be really cool.
That is cool,
Even if they were all preprogrammed to perform excactly in sync, still good. They actually played the music pretty well..
And the music was quite catchy.. Lupin IIIrd you say?. That cartoon show?.. It had this catchy music?..
Gotta watch it now..
Welcome to the bottom deep of the uncanny valley.
Those things seriously give me the jibblies.
"come on in here!!"
Who said they were not moving their fingers? Look closer dude.
I saw the robot trumpet player up close (ten feet) last year at the toyota Grand Prix here in town. As a music teacher, I was curious to see what was going on up close. What I can tell you is that there is no buzzing whatsoever. The mouthpiece is is not a real mouthpiece. As the robot dude brought the trumpet to his "mouth," a small tube popped out of the mouthpiece and inserted into the hole in his face. What that means, I have no idea except that it wasn't the real thing. The "performance" was actually kinda boring after the first minute. About as exciting as watching my coffee pot brew coffee.