Robotic Percussion Quartet

co-designed a robotic percussion quartet system with musicians to play uniquely robotic music with human interaction

This was my senior thesis work at Princeton University, advised by Professor Naomi Leonard (Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering), Dr. Jeff Snyder (Music), and Professor Radhika Nagpal (Computer Science, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering).

In this work, we co-designed a robotic percussion quartet made up of Sphero BOLT robots with musicians. We were inspired by robotic strengths in music-making, such as the ability to easily add randomness, coordination between robot group members, and exact precision. Most robotic music systems try to emulate humans by training on human musician movements and playing, but we aimed to use this percussion quartet to create uniquely robotic music that humans would have a difficult time reproducing.

A public demo of the robotic quartet playing music without human interaction.

We also added human interaction into this piece, mediated by use of a MIDI keyboard. Through the keyboard, participants were able to not just interact with the robots but actually feel like a new member of the instrumental group.

Generally, audience response was extremely positive, with participants indicating a positive experience. We also found that participants believed the robotic percussion music to be unreproducible by humans, and we found that non-expert roboticists and expert musicians had the most positive mindset shift when faced with the experience among all viewers.

A recording of my thesis oral presentation.

A paper detailing the results of this project is currently in submission.