Cybraphon is a very emotional robot musician. When its popularity wanes it falls first from gloom, dejection, and misery into dark desolation. However, when its popularity surges, it experiences bliss and even delerium. Cybraphon's greatest joy in life (or perhaps in programmed logic) is to play for crowds, and its melodies change based on its emotions. (Source: Wired.com)
Cybraphon is a truly unique robot between its web connectivity, neurotically emotional nature, and its ability to produce mood-influenced instrumental music. (Source: Make: Online)
Machine is one of a kind and yearns for your attention
A trio of tech savvy English musicians -- Kirby, Ziggy Campbell and Tommy Pheron -- decided to put their own quest for fame on a short hiatus and develop the world's first true robotic rock star. While some bands have employed everything from run-of-the-mill drum machines to multi-instrument wonder-machines, these guys want something even better -- a robot that thinks like a rockstar, and is truly worth of a place among the UK's most distinguished robotic denizens such as Adam, the researcher robot.
They created Cybraphon, an indie rocking robot that plays an exotic Indian classical instrument called the Shruti box, chimes, cymbals, assorted other percussion instruments, and an organ to create a melodic purely instrumental mix. Like any good rock star Cybraphon yearns for fame and judges its own artistic worth via its popularity. The neurotic android's emotions swing from delerium to desolation based on changes in its online popularity and its music changes accordingly.
A technical overview of the beast begins with the machines that compose it. Built in eight months with a £5,000 grant, the machine uses a PC and microcontroller to drive the 13 robotic servos that play the Shruti box. A fan pumps air into the organ, while more servos press the keys. The percussion features 12 chimes struck by suspended solenoids, and beaters for other percussion pieces attached to motors. To round out its unique instrumental arsenal it has a set of antique brass gramophone horns that plays a custom record on queue.
Infrared sensors tell the robot that someone is around it. It occasionally plays by itself, but it usually likes an audience. States Kirby, "The Cybraphon is switched on all the time but it really wakes up when someone walks up to it."
The robot's features a web-engine written in Python and MAX/MSP that monitors changes in the robots popularity on Facebook, Myspace, Google, and more. Explains Kirby, "The software takes email alerts from Facebook, Google and so on, processes them and compares the current activity to that in the last 24 or 48 hours to calculate the rate of change."
Base on how popular it is, the robot will belt out anything from a cheerful harmonic tune (when its popular) to a cacophonic dirge dripping in sadness (when it neglected). Despite being increasingly popular, the emotional machine has a tendency towards depression, say its creators. No matter how popular it gets, it will eventually see its growth of interest taper off on the surveyed sites, and it will fall into dark depression -- just like a real artist.
Kirby states, "It is happy when it feels its popularity increases but is miserable if it is being ignored. We modelled it on an insecure, egotistical band. Bands by their very nature tend to be volatile and prone to implosion. I'm surprised that the Cybraphon, a highly neurotic beast with some questionable electrical wiring, hasn't hit self destruct yet."
The one critical disappointment about robot (and its creators) is its inability to promote itself properly -- the robot's music is not available streaming online, though demo videos are available here. The robot merely keeps track of its friends on Facebook, Myspace, and other sites. You can also follow this moody artist on Twitter -- or if, you're lucky enough to meet it in person you can see its emotion displayed on a classy 100 year-old galvanometer housed in the wardrobe which houses the machine's guts.
Cybraphon goes on display at the Inspace art gallery in Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Art Festival in August. One thing's for sure, though -- for its own safety, keep the wire-snips away from this melancholic machine, at all costs.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
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