The MAiRA Pro S robot is an ensemble of three arms that conduct music. (Image Credit: David.Suenderhauf/Hellerau hall)
Dresden, Germany, deployed MAiRA Pro S, a three-arm music conducting robot that acts like a human orchestra conductor. Recently, it conducted musicians from the Dresdner Sinfoniker orchestra in two performances. The robot recognizes beat time and dynamics. This robot isn’t intended to replace humans but to perform music too complex for human conductors. The Sinfoniker celebrated its 25th anniversary with the Robotersinfome at the Hellerau Hall. According to Markus Rindt, artistic director of Dresden’s Sinfoniker, this concert was split in two: one human-led and the other robot-led.
The three-armed MAiRA robot held onto different color batons that moved individually to produce cross-rhythms. Composer Andreas Gundlach wrote Semiconductor’s Masterpiece consisting of 16 brass musicians and four percussionists performing in contrasting time signatures. Some started slowly before gradually accelerating, while the rest slowed down. Gundlach mentioned that MAiRA ensured smooth-sounding music.
MAiRA was taught arm movements similarly to a human. Rindt displayed 40 arm movements, and the robot adopted and implemented them with increasing complexity during its two-year development stage. Each arm features seven joints for multi-directional movement. It also has a safety mechanism to prevent the robot from damaging itself or musicians if it exhibits too much force.
USTC’s medical robot finger can detect lumps or check a patient’s pulse. (Image Credit: USTC/Hongbo Wang)
Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) have developed an ultrasensitive soft robot finger capable of medical tasks like checking for a pulse and checking for lumps. The team believes this technology could simplify early disease detection, such as *** cancer, leading to quicker treatment. It can also benefit patients by making physical exams more comfortable.
“Despite the remarkable progress in the last decade, most soft fingers presented in the literature still have substantial gaps compared to human hands,” the authors wrote. They also said robotic fingers are incapable of handling real-world scenarios. So, the team created a device featuring conductive fiber coils with two parts. One part has a coil wound on the air chamber of the device’s bending actuators. The other has a twisted liquid metal fiber attached to the fingertip. This allows the device to detect an object’s properties similarly to a human touch.
They tested the finger by brushing a feather against the fingertip. “The magnified view clearly shows the resistance change, indicating its high sensitivity in force sensing,” the team wrote in their study. Afterward, they tapped and pushed the fingertip with a glass rod before repetitively bending the finger. This allowed them to determine if the device correctly perceived the quantity and type of applied force.
Then, the team placed the finger on a robotic arm to see if it could detect three lumps in a silicone sheet. The finger touched the area the same way as a doctor. Even though the robot finger was mounted on the arm, it still correctly found an artery on a patient’s wrist and took their pulse.
The robot shark is a replica of the whale shark. (Image Credit: Jam Press)
The Xiaomeisha Sea World in Shenzhen, China, faced backlash earlier this month after aquarium fanatics realized that the whale shark swimming around turned out to be a robot. The water park was initially closed for a five-year renovation project. Approximately 100,000 visitors spent $40 to enter the water park and were eager to see the whale shark that could reach over 60 feet in length.
However, many visitors didn’t appreciate the view after realizing the massive beast was a mechanical replica. Images online show the robot with gaps in its torso where the segments connect. Xiaomeisha officials said that the robot shark, costing millions of Chinese yuan to build, is intended to adhere to laws that prohibit shark trading.
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