Chinese electronics company Xiaomi introduced the CyberOne robot last August and recently shared a new video of it playing the drums. Although the tempo is slow at the moment, the advantage is that it can maintain the tempo appropriately.
He is able to precisely orchestrate a variety of complex movements, such as striking drumsticks together, tapping cymbals, using a foot pedal, and using a set of 4 drums to produce a wide variety of sounds.
How did CyberOne learn to do this?
This robot uses a MIDI file as input to learning percussion, which the robot can decode and convert into drum beats, according to IEEE Spectrum.
Next, the robot builds song-length sequences of syncopated tracks for the entire body of the piece, which is challenging because the final effects have to ensure that the drums are played precisely to the beat. Even when you’re moving back and forth across the drum kit, CyberOne works well.
“After the official release of the Xiaomi CyberOne on August 11, we received a lot of feedback from the public who had no background in robotics,” Xu Ren, chief hardware engineer of Xiaomi Robotics Lab, told IEEE Spectrum. “They explained that they are more interested in seeing robots doing things that humans can’t do easily. Frankly, it’s very difficult to find such scenarios, because we know that the first prototype of CyberOne lags far behind humans.”
“But one day, one of our engineers who had just started playing drums suggested that drumming might be an exception. I thought that compared to novice drummers, robots have more advantages in coordinated movement of hand and foot and rhythmic control. We all thought it was a good idea, and also Playing the drums is very cool and fun, so we chose to try out the drums to show the strength of our research.”
More about CyberOne
“Both the AI and mechanical capabilities of CyberOne are self-developed by Xiaomi Robotics Lab. We have invested heavily in research and development in various fields, including software, hardware, and algorithm innovation,” says Li Jin, Founder, President, and CEO of Xiaomi Group.
CyberOne is a robot that is 177 cm tall, weighs 52 kg, and has an arm length of 168 cm. This robot is mechanically more complex than a four-legged robot, requiring more efficient motors, sophisticated control algorithms, and bipeds.
CyberOne can perfectly imitate human motions as it supports up to 21 levels of motion, and achieves a real-time response speed of 0.5ms for each motion.
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