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phoenix
Joined: Dec 09, 2005
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Location: munich, germany
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 Posted: Sun Sep 03, 2006 3:02 am Post subject:
 Robot tech in Future Instruments
Subject description: Let us discuss how robot technology could change the way we make music |
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I am currently working at a robotics laboratory where we use robot arms to give woman/man the "feel" (the haptic impression) of a virtual world, just like virtual instruments give them the acoustic and 3D-graphic cards give them the optic impression. Haptics will be the next great frontier to close the gap between humans and technology.
 Think about the following: You hold a rod in your hand that is attached to a robot arm. The robot arm can follow your movements in free motion OR give you the impression that you touched something (a drum), or that movement is harder in a certain direction (like a bow of a violin) while in others it is free. You could feel resonation if you touched a body. You could use the robot arm as a midi controller: 20 wheels which are losely distributed in space can be touched by moving the robot arm around in this space.
 How will your personal virtual Instrument feel like? Or: Think about the way you program your synth. What would help you in playing your patches, which do not yet have a body? It is all virtual! Would you reprogram your beloved synths or would you try out totally new designs? |
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opg
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:29 am Post subject:
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I think most electronic musicians would agree that they would want as many hands for knob twiddling as possible. Like that guy in the center of the Earth who is at the controls. 
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DrJustice
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Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 10:25 am Post subject:
Re: Robot tech in Future Instruments
Subject description: Let us discuss how robot technology could change the way we make music |
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| phoenix wrote: | | How will your personal virtual Instrument feel like? Or: Think about the way you program your synth. What would help you in playing your patches, which do not yet have a body? It is all virtual! Would you reprogram your beloved synths or would you try out totally new designs? |
I'm thinking, if you were to have a virtual "anything" controller with feedback, then you'd need something like a fully servoed glove (if we limit this to just the hands for the moment) that could give each finger joint a dynamic force or damping. The whole glove would have to be mechanically fixed so that if you e.g. press a button, your finger/hand would not be able to move further when the button reaches its end position, i.e. to allow you to feel and operate object as if they were physical. And perhaps even some pressure to feel what you are virtually touching. I haven't even seen this in sci-fi movies (not that those dealing with virtuality are anything but rubbish IMO...).
The mechanical contraption described above would be quite something, and increasingly so as it lets you move your limbs about. Hey - you could walk around in this virtual world by using similarly servoed shoes. Next up is a full body servoed suit with sensory enhancements like pressure and temperature. It would be great for my racing simulator - gripping the wheel and stomping on the pedals that aren't really there... Yes, I'm running wild now 
As it happens, I do have physical synths, drumsticks and so on that is enough to satisfy my need for tactility - but given the opportunity, I'm sure there'd be crazy fun opportunities in the musical realm too, I just haven't developed a specific need yet.
DJ
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phoenix
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 1:47 pm Post subject:
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As it turns out, at our lab some people are working at exactly the things you are hoping to get your hands on  For example, we do have an actuated glove that can give your fingers the impression of touching something virtual or telepresent, with defined dynamics. I can assure you that ALL the other things you have mentioned are in work by us or collaborators of us. Maybe in 5-10 years you might be able to buy them and in 10-15 years they might be usable 
One thing I find really interesting about virtual robotic instruments is the fact that they can interact with you physically. You can feel resonance. You can give them the body of a woman or a man and twiddle around with them. You can mistreat them: You can reload the fender-guitar after sacrificing it during a hardrock concert! The audience will turn wild if they see how the guitar that you broke into thousand pieces is reborn in your hands! |
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DrJustice
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 3:53 pm Post subject:
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That sounds cool, phoenix! To grab hold of your Fender example, do you reckon the precision and sensitivity will be enough to fairly convey such subtle feelings as that of playing a guitar?
There has been little talk about VR the last few years. I guess the expectations were too high, too early. Novelty devices as in the feeble attempts at VR arcade games haven't exactly delivered the dream. Couple that with the useless popular presentation of what it might have been (Lawnmover man et al), and I can understand why it's not so much the subject of public pop-talk these days.
I'd excpect to see VR and robotics at some point in applications like remote operation of robots in dangerous and dirty work and such. I suppose that we might be close to seeing it "for real" in medicine and surgery(?) What are the applications you are working on?
DJ
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elektro80
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| Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 4:04 pm Post subject:
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I reckon the really exciting stuff will be found in making new concepts for GUI/tactility. Imagine a multilayered playable envelope generator/filter thingie that allows you to manipulate spectral characteristics in new ways. However, getting the gear to the market doesn´t turn it into an instant awesome instrument success. Too many great instrument ideas never made it.
Consider that it is possible to argue that what turned the synth into a success was cheap accessible software instruments. Before digital technology synths were still a fringe and madcap idea. Back in the 80s vendors even turned the synth concept into presetladen polkaboards in order to survive.
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phoenix
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 1:17 am Post subject:
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| DrJustice wrote: | That sounds cool, phoenix! To grab hold of your Fender example, do you reckon the precision and sensitivity will be enough to fairly convey such subtle feelings as that of playing a guitar?
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Actually, the feeling of playing a guitar is not as subtle as one would think. Think about the ear: it's a filter that cuts off at 16kHz. With MP3 and knowledge about psychoacoustics, you can give the hearer the impression that he listens to an orchester, although what he hears is only the small part he CAN actually hear and resolve. With haptic interfaces it will be similar. In the end, what you need is not the exact duplicate of a guitar, which, in the near future, would not be possible with our technology. But: if you take into consideration what a human can feel and give him an approximation, he might be content with the result.
| DrJustice wrote: |
I suppose that we might be close to seeing it "for real" in medicine and surgery(?) What are the applications you are working on?
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Minimally invasive surgery MIS is exactly what I am working on. In MIS, exactly what you said holds:
| DrJustice wrote: |
There has been little talk about VR the last few years. I guess the expectations were too high, too early.
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In the 90's, for MIS great robots have been built with a lot of hubub about them, and every single surgeon wanted to get his fingers on this new technology (see http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/). The expectations were in many ways too high. One big problem with ALL VR or telepresence applications is the size of the robotic devices and the fact that they are not versatile enough. Speaking of the guitar, the robot you would use for it would only be good for this one application. If you wanted to play on a piano, you would need a different one. And they are big and heavy. It is like in the old days of electronic music, I think: A Rhodes sounds different than a Wurlitzer, but you had to change the piano to change the sound. Interestingly, the first modular robots are being constructed now. What you see here is a robot whose single joints are autonomous units which communicate with each other like the modules in a modular synth to the effect that a ball is being caught: http://www.dlr.de/rm/Desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-421/
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phoenix
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 1:27 am Post subject:
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| elektro80 wrote: | | I reckon the really exciting stuff will be found in making new concepts for GUI/tactility. Imagine a multilayered playable envelope generator/filter thingie that allows you to manipulate spectral characteristics in new ways. |
Yes, that is what I thought, too: The best controller we have to manipulate spectral characteristics is a wheel! 5 cm long! Without force feedback- you can not yet feel the sound. You feel the wheel. Now imagine how it would be if you felt the different spectral characteristics of a sound on different fingers and could manipulate them at the same time. You would have to train to play that, but it would be worth the result! What do you think?
| elektro80 wrote: |
Consider that it is possible to argue that what turned the synth into a success was cheap accessible software instruments. Before digital technology synths were still a fringe and madcap idea. Back in the 80s vendors even turned the synth concept into presetladen polkaboards in order to survive. |
You are definitely right. This discussion is maybe more fruitfull if we distinguish between software and hardware robotics. The software is the virtual feel and the hardware can be an actuated glove, a robot arm with a rod at the end or a pin array for the fingers. What do you think might be the polkaboard of haptic interfaces?
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phoenix
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 1:30 am Post subject:
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| opg wrote: | | I think most electronic musicians would agree that they would want as many hands for knob twiddling as possible. Like that guy in the center of the Earth who is at the controls. |
Heh, a friend of mine is constructing a brain-computer-interface. You will have MANY hands for knob twiddling when he is done. And you will not need the guy inside earth any longer 
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elektro80
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 2:51 am Post subject:
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| phoenix wrote: | | opg wrote: | | I think most electronic musicians would agree that they would want as many hands for knob twiddling as possible. Like that guy in the center of the Earth who is at the controls. |
Heh, a friend of mine is constructing a brain-computer-interface. You will have MANY hands for knob twiddling when he is done. And you will not need the guy inside earth any longer |
A powerful man, ...hollow earth...
Are we talking about conspiracies here? 
Reptilian nazis from Mars, hollow earth, nazi UFOs...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_mysticism#Nazi_mysticism_and_modern_pseudoscience
| Quote: | The writings of Miguel Serrano, Julius Evola, Savitri Devi, and other proponents of Nazi Mysticism have spawned numerous later works connecting Aryan master race beliefs and Nazi escape scenarios with enduring conspiracy theories about reptilian humanoids, hollow earth civilizations, and shadowy new world orders; Perhaps the strongest proof of this last statement lies in the words of America’s ex-president Franklin D. Roosevelt from his famous Lend Lease speech on March 15th 1941-in opposition to the Nazi’s new world order: “They seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers who have seized power by force.Yes, these men and their hypnotized followers call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.."[3]. In addition, the book Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili scholar Joscelyn Godwin discusses pseudoscientific theories regarding surviving Nazi elements in Antarctica. Arktos is notable for its scholarly approach and examination of many sources currently unavailable elsewhere in English-language translation.
Godwin and other authors including Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke have also discussed Hitler’s purported Antarctic reptilian companions (sometimes seen to be Hyperboreans) as well as the connections between Nazi Mysticism and Vril energy, the hidden Shambhala and Agartha civilizations, and underground UFO bases.
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opg
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elektro80
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 7:27 am Post subject:
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| opg wrote: | And let's not forget about Middle Earth. Has there been a Hobbit vs. Nazi movie yet?  |
I think there is one in the making now, and Sylvester Stallone is starring as Eva Braun. This is a Hollywood movie.. so.. basically there is no plot, no story.. or no real acting, but the SFX stuff will be stunning.
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seraph
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kkissinger
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 11:26 am Post subject:
F vs. E and robot musings |
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| elektro80 wrote: | | no plot, no story.. or no real acting, but the SFX stuff will be stunning. |
Hmmm... replace the "F" with an "E" and it becomes porn.
If robots were to turn knobs, then they could be modeled in software to respond to the music in real time. In the lingo of Object-oriented programming, each control knob would have its own methods that respond in real time to the music.
On my Kurzweil synth, every parameter has corresponding control inputs and a dedicated VCA-like function to control input levels (it is labeled a "depth" parameter). There are a plethora of control sources and functions however I wouldn't go as far to say that they have any logic or intelligence.
I have always been pretty hardware oriented however the potential of software synths is staggering. I can envision a software synth with "smart" modules that can contain rules -- etc -- to respond to whatever I am doing -- say on a keyboard or on one of my Theremins.
Do such software synths exist now?
I think mechanical "robots" would have visual appeal for a live setting -- particularly if they could move/dance -- whatever along with the music. The robots could be lighted and could have light sources on them to project light and images.
Anyway, I am just kind of brainstorming here. |
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phoenix
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| Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 1:18 pm Post subject:
Re: F vs. E and robot musings |
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| kkissinger wrote: |
I think mechanical "robots" would have visual appeal for a live setting -- particularly if they could move/dance -- whatever along with the music. The robots could be lighted and could have light sources on them to project light and images.
Anyway, I am just kind of brainstorming here. |
You will love to watch this:
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-6108723779145756123 
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mosc
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| Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 6:42 pm Post subject:
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 Phoenix, great to have you here. Facinating topic.
I would like to build rooms full of giant interactive sound sculptures made of different virtual materials.
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deknow
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| Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:34 am Post subject:
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...this discussion makes me think of animusic:
http://www.animusic.com/
this is on our local public tv station from time to time, and it's fantastic.
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destroyifyer
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Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 10:11 pm Post subject:
sweet
Subject description: yeah |
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| I can't wait until the "dancing robot" creators make "karate fighting" robots. That would be awesome. |
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phoenix
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| Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 7:35 am Post subject:
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| mosc wrote: | Phoenix, great to have you here. Facinating topic.
I would like to build rooms full of giant interactive sound sculptures made of different virtual materials. |
After I have thought about this about 10 times, I might have understood what you want to say. Your idea is a virtual physical structure that can be felt and brought into sound by touching it or by itself.
Would it not be fine to have a physical model of a song of you stream by like a waterfall and you could modulate certain characteristics of sound or composition (maybe a pattern in your composition or spectral characteristics of a sound) by touching them? The feel of different elements could be very different, too.
What do you think?
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deknow
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| Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 5:33 am Post subject:
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...sounds more like a video game than an instrument....not that there isn't an overlap between the two concepts.
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opg
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| Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 7:02 am Post subject:
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| phoenix wrote: | Would it not be fine to have a physical model of a song of you stream by like a waterfall and you could modulate certain characteristics of sound or composition (maybe a pattern in your composition or spectral characteristics of a sound) by touching them? The feel of different elements could be very different, too.
What do you think? |
Actually, I can envision this as a really awesome sequencer, combined with something like a Kaoss pad, but there wouldn't be any physical contact and there would be a lot more variables to manipulate.
Why am I starting to think of the 4th dimension again? 
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mosc
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bachus
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| Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 6:55 pm Post subject:
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| phoenix wrote: | Would it not be fine to have a physical model of a song of you stream by like a waterfall and you could modulate certain characteristics of sound or composition (maybe a pattern in your composition or spectral characteristics of a sound) by touching them? The feel of different elements could be very different, too.
What do you think? |
Hello phoenix, very interesting work you are doing. Regarding the modulation of certain characteristics of composition: To me that seems both exciting and daunting at the same time. To be serviceable the physical model has to be tied to an abstract model that is coherent and comprehensible. What kind of data would be in the stream? What level and kind of musical abstractions will be tangibly present there? What kinds of visual representations would one grasp and manipulate; characters, simple geometries, colored modeling clay, watery Rubik’s Cubes?
A virtual keyboard might be really interesting. If one can even approximate the sense of touch one could have the keys of a keyboard replaced by breast nipples in the same or similar arrangement. Think of the dimensions of expression one could explore with the fingertips. And no, good sir, I am not just trying to be funny. That same “keyboard” could morph into any number of expressive physical representations. And they could be deep. That is, be of such complexity of dimension that they are worthy of the time and skill required to put them to “best” use. They could provide data much more complex and subtle than can be carried by a simple scalar value. It could be a truly expressive musical instrument.
I'd buy one.
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phoenix
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| Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:14 pm Post subject:
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| bachus wrote: | | I'd buy one. |
Great! How much would you pay for it?
But earnestly, I would like to see and feel it myself. That is why I posted this discussion- I want to get a feel for the people's thoughts because I want to realize them in the end.
You have a very plastic way of expressing your thoughts- what you are talking about is the software that might be behind a force feedback musical device. And I think the breast feeling is a very good way to show people how this could touch them emotionally. In VR-applications, we say that each additional perceptional ingredient of the application (visual, audio and haptic, or even smell) increases the "immersence". Immersence is the feeling to be in a real rather than a virtual environment. I think that haptic devices have as great a potential as high fi audio and graphics when they are available at reasonable prices and quality.
One question goes out to all the women among us: What would your preferred piece of software be?
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mosc
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| Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:40 pm Post subject:
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| bachus wrote: | | A virtual keyboard might be really interesting. If one can even approximate the sense of touch one could have the keys of a keyboard replaced by breast nipples in the same or similar arrangement. Think of the dimensions of expression one could explore with the fingertips. And no, good sir, I am not just trying to be funny. That same “keyboard” could morph into any number of expressive physical representations. And they could be deep. That is, be of such complexity of dimension that they are worthy of the time and skill required to put them to “best” use. They could provide data much more complex and subtle than can be carried by a simple scalar value. It could be a truly expressive musical instrument. |
I would buy one too...
But I might be affraid to use it.
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