Grybot: A Didactic Guitar Hero Robot Player on FPGA

The development of machines able to solve problems as well as human beings is one of the goals of robotics. Guitar Hero is a popular game in which the player rolls their motor skills by pressing buttons according to the rhythm of a chosen song. Due to the high difficulty level of the game does not exist yet a robotic system able to outperform the best human players. The development of the robot, called Grybot, is motivated by stimulating the formation of young computer scientists and engineers in a playful environment. Grybot is an automatic robot dedicated to play the Guitar Hero III game in a PlayStation 2 console. It uses only a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) device to detect notes by processing the component video signal in real time and, through a solenoid driver circuit, physically to press the buttons of a DualShock 2 control. The robot gets correct hits between 95% and 100% on every song in the game playlist and at any level of difficulty. In particular, it reaches 698,622 points and 98% correct hit on the song "Through the Fires and Flames" on Expert mode without using the Star Power, which multiplies the score obtained by the player. This score places the Grybot in the 241st position in the world ranking according to the ScoreHero site.