VALENCIA, Calif. — They can defuse bombs, help decontaminate nuclear power plants, even vacuum the floor. One thing you don’t see robots doing, though, is jamming with a live, human orchestra.
Except at the California Institute of the Arts, where MahaDeviBot, GlockenBot, BreakBot and a handful of their cyber-friends have been making music with students in the small private school’s music and theater arts classes.
For months, a dozen human musicians and a near- equal number of robots have been getting their groove on in anticipation of a concert Thursday night at the school’s Walt Disney Modular Theater.
“It’s like a symbiotic relationship between humans and machines,” said Ajay Kapur, a musician with a doctorate in electrical engineering who heads the music technology program at the school co-founded by Walt Disney. Kapur and Michael Darling, who runs CalArts’ theater arts program, recruited the musicians and built the robots out of everything from leftover theater props to busted furniture.
