Musical robots: Towards a natural joint performance

In this paper, we describe the mechanical design system implemented to enable a robot flute player to enhance the expressiveness of its performance, reproducing the different musical articulations with the available features of the instrument. In addition, the robot has been equipped with a Human Gesture Recognition system to recognize the real-time variations in tempo, dynamics, and articulation dictated by the conductor's movements. The possibility for the robot to change its performance parameters according to the conductor directions, thus adding expression to its performance while being synchronized with all the other human musicians, would lead to an improvement in the overall joint musical performance.