What happens when robots make beautiful music together? They act like total rock stars, of course.
New Zealand composer Nigel Stanford has been wowing fans for years with his music videos that explore the intersection of music and technology. But whenever we need a dose of inspiration while dreaming up new Hamilton products, we keep coming back to one of Stanford’s video in particular. Part of his astonishing Automatica project, it features a symphony of robot arms playing drums, piano, guitars and turntables with such dexterity and nuance that it literally takes your breath away. The rock bots even destroy the set at the end, in true diva fashion.
Stanford, whose music has been adopted by both NASA and the European Space agency, first hatched the idea for his bionic symphony back in 2015, when he was loaned three industrial robots from Germany’s KUKA Robotics. With animation software to program them, Stanford shut himself away in his garage for a month, tinkering away through trial and error to make the robots produce the sound he wanted. For the video, Stanford makes three robots look like 16 by combining separate shots into one. It’s an astonishing piece of work you won’t soon forget.
Just how did he pull it off? Stanford claims that the piano and synth were fairly easy for the robots to master, while the bass and DJ were the hardest “because the robots had to press down hard enough on the strings and turntable to operate them, but not so hard as to destroy them.” The robots ended up being accurate to within 0.3 mm each time.
Watch. Listen. And get inspired.