Robots, Student Team Up to Create Miles Davis-inspired Funk

A Georgia Tech student has surrounded himself with a team of dancing robots and an improvising, marimba-playing bot to collaborate on an original, Miles Davis-inspired composition. Mason Bretan, a Ph.D. candidate in music technology, plays the drums, guitar and keyboard. A robot named Shimon listens to the sounds, then generates music on a marimba using its computational knowledge of jazz theory and improvisation. At the same time, a trio of Shimi robots autonomously generates dance choreographies based on a joint analysis of the music and a self-awareness of their physical constraints and abilities.