SCIENCE CURRENT EVENT #2

Science is truly an amazing thing. Especially the creation of improvising robots that play music with humans. This happened in November 2009. The Takanishi Laboratory at Waseda University,created these robots. They made robots that play music before, but simply replaying a recorded piece wasn't enough. Now they have made a robot that mimics a human's instrument playing. They also plan to improve it over the years. The researchers created an algorithm that allows the robot to combine visual cues from its cameras with audio cues from its microphones to respond to a human musician.
I think that this is a spectacular achievement in the field of robotics. The "Jazzbot" seems like it would be extremely fun to play around with, or to play music with. However, I feel that the skill of robotics engineers could be better put to use by helping humans who need it. There are countless members of society that could better function if they were given the aid of certain types of robotics. For example, many people are handicapped, and could use the skill of robotics engineers to come up with new forms of prosthetics or machines to help them get around. There are also many projects going on to try and build robots that may be sent to other planets for exploration to further the knowledge of humans. I think advancements in robotics would be more useful in one of these situations rather than creating a robot for having fun.









http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-11/new-jazz-bot-jams-humans-really-swings