Australian research group NICTA and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have developed a clarinet-playing robot that runs Linux. The "Robo-Clarinet" won first prize at the Artemis Music Orchestra competition with a torrid rendition of "The Flight of the Bumblebee" and "Bolero."

(Click for larger view of Robo-Clarinet )


Staged in Athens. Greece, by the Artemisia Association, the Artemis Music Orchestra competition is designed to raise awareness about "the growing capacity and applications of embedded computer systems," says NICTA (National Information/Communication Technology, Australia). Second prize at the event went to the Dutch teamDARE (Daring Autonomous Robots Eindhoven), which developed a guitar-picking robot. Third prize went to a piano-playing machine from HAMK University in Finland. At presstime, it was unclear whether the HAMK team used Linux, as it has in the past. The teamDARE guitar used Windows, according to Project Leader Frank van Heesh, who said, "Our previous robots ran Linux (with great reliability), but for this one we used Windows because our vision functions were written and optimized for the Directshow framework. The vision routines detect a conductor's baton so one can control the playback speed."

Robo-Clarinet YouTube video
(Click for details)
More information on the Robo-Clarinet can be found at this UNSW page.


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