Georgia Tech robot grabs attention of federal agency

For the past couple of years, Georgia Tech music professor Gil Weinberg has been jamming at concerts all over the world with his invention, Haile the drum-playing robot.

Haile uses artificial intelligence to improvise on real drums and respond to human musicians in an ensemble. The robot has done so well he has taken up a new instrument — the xylophone.

Weinberg's work with Haile recently caught the attention of the National Science Foundation, which asked him to submit a proposal for a grant to develop a second musical robot.

The approval isn't final, but "we are inclined to award it to him," said Lisa-Joy Zgorski, a public affairs specialist with the federal agency. Weinberg said the grant would be for about $450,000, which would allow him to hire 3 or 4 graduate students to help him build a much more advanced musical robot. The new robot would have four arms, instead of Haile's two, and would be able to improvise melodies and harmonies with human musicians.

It's unusual for the science foundation to give grants to musicians, even ones like Weinberg who are on the cutting edge of music technology, Zgorski said.

But part of the agency's mission is to explore new ways that people and computers might interact in the future, and Weinberg's work could advance understanding in that area, she said. "It's a risky project, but potentially transformative as well."

She added that the science foundation's experts "believe that tomorrow's computers will be aware of their environment, and able to modify their behaviors in appropriate ways" — a well-behaved social robot, if you will.

Weinberg, who has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's famed Media Lab, created a new master's degree in music technology at Tech last year.

He also has invented several new instruments that let kids — and untrained adults — experience the joy of music-making without ever having to play scales. One example: a "music shapers" that emit sound when kids stretch and pull them.

Haile has been his most successful creation, in terms of both scientific interest and entertainment value. Weinberg and the robot have played to packed houses from Atlanta to Copenhagen. The next Atlanta concert will be in April at a yet-to-be-determined venue.

Weinberg believes that Haile could help scientists figure out how to make robots more useful to humans — not as a stand-in for a drummer who doesn't show up at the jazz club, but as an intelligent helper in other areas.

"Now that robots are so prevalent, how do you embed them in the human environment?" he said. "I could see that this work might be of interest to someone who is studying, for example, how a robot might help an astronaut fix the space shuttle."

August 23rd 2007