Music-ensemble robot that is capable of playing the theremin while listening to the accompanied music

Abstract

Abstract. Our goal is to achieve a musical ensemble among a robot and human musicians where the robot listens to the music with its own microphones. The main issues are (1) robust beat-tracking since the robot hears its own generated sounds in addition to the accompanied music, and (2) robust synchronizing its performance with the accompanied music even if humans ’ musical performance fluctuates. This paper presents a music-ensemble Thereminist robot implemented on the humanoid HRP-2 with the following three functions: (1) self-generated Theremin sound suppression by semi-blind Independent Component Analysis, (2) beat tracking robust against tempo fluctuation in humans ’ performance, and (3) feedforward control of Theremin pitch. Experimental results with a human drummer show the capability of this robot for the adaptation to the temporal fluctuation in his performance.