USA: Scientists at Georgia Tech are about to commercialise Shimi, their dancing robot, an android designed to put glide in your stride

Record ID: 401841

  • Title: USA: Scientists at Georgia Tech are about to commercialise Shimi, their dancing robot, an android designed to put glide in your stride
  • Date: 13th September 2012
  • Summary: MASON BRETAN, SHIMI DEVELOPER, DANCING WITH ROBOT SHIMI DANCING
  • Embargoed: 28th September 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Technology,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVADU2M9F21VT51APE3R10Q46NM
  • Story Text: Shimi the robot knows that Guns and Roses is one of Gil Weinberg's favourite bands. In fact Shimi knows all about Weinberg's taste in music because Weinberg programmed him that way. Gil Weinberg is the director for music technology at Georgia Tech University and Shimi is his latest creation. Not only does Shimi play music on demand, he dances to it as well.

    "By projecting the most basic elements of human interaction with music which is movement and dance and have a robot do it with you elevates it back, the whole interaction with music technology, to a very visceral and physical and engaging level," said Weinberg who has spent his entire academic career attempting to marry music and robotics.
    Weinberg and his team say Shimi represents the next generation of speaker dock system, a kind of musical, robotic companion.
    At its core, Shimi's software is based on a technology called Music Information Retrieval - which can analyse an audio signal and extract different components such as the beat and tempo - giving Shimi the ability to dance.

    "Oh yeah, Shimi dances a lot better than me," said Ian Campbell, who is part of a team at Georgia Tech attempting to commercialise Shimi.

    "The challenge with this project was taking something, taking robots that were a hundred thousand dollars plus in these academic research projects and getting it down to a cost point and a price point that you and I, the everyday consumer could purchase," Campbell added.
    Wienberg and his team came to an answer by literally thinking outside the box, or outside the robot in this case. Instead of building Shimi a very sophisticated robot brain, the team transferred its intelligence to a smart phone.

    "Shimi's brain is a cell phone. So it can be affordable. Once you plug the cell phone into Shimi it becomes smart. It's connected to the cloud. It knows a lot about music. What's hot today for example just by going through blogs and every song it knows what a beat and how to dance to." said Weinberg.
    Mason Bretan, one of Shimi's developers, says the robot utilises all of the sensors of a smart phone such us a microphone and camera and software such as voice recognition. With all of these tools, Shimi's programming is designed to recognise patterns and study his owners - ultimately to better understand them.

    "So if I am communicating with Shimi and I say 'Oh Shimi, I have had a bad day' maybe it can understand that and respond musically in some way or gesturally in some way that responds to your mood," said Bretan, a PHD student at Georgia Tech.
    The team are currently putting the finishing touches on Shimi and are in the process of raising money with an eye of mass production. At the right price, they hope Shimi could soon be dancing its way into living rooms all over the world.
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