Research Purpose

Humanoid, an anthropomorphic robot, is being developed for practical uses in the human living environment. We believe that the ability to interact with human emotionally is important for humanoid robot. Therefore we developed an Anthropomorphic Flutist Robot WF-3RVIII, which reproduces the functions of human organs, to interact with human musically and to clarify the mechanism involved in human flute playing from an engineering view point.

Former Research

The development of this robot was started in 1990.
At first, we developed an accompaniment-system synchronized by MIDI, and designed the hardware to do basic musical performances. As the result of these developments, our robot reproduces every human organ functions as real as possible. In addition, we have invited a professional flutist as our technical adviser. Then we have made researches to aim at improvements of expression power for performances (trilling and vibrato technique) and autonomic systems of this robot (autonomic tone-searching method).
These days, we researched on the interactive function between a human and the robot. We can play in concert with this robot by using the MIDI instrument.

Fig. 1 past WF series

Hardware of this Robot

This robot has these hardwares.

Fig. 4 Relative positioning mechanism between Embouchure hole and Mouth (3-DOF)

Fig. 5 Lips made by elastic body (3-DOF)

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Fig. 6 Lung (same volume as a human adult)		Fig. 7 Vibrating mechanism

Fig. 8 Fingers (which can trill)

Fig. 9 Double tonguing mechanism and buccal cavity made by FRP

Musical Performance System

This robot can perform music by using the musical performance system (Fig．10). Sequencer PC outputs MIDI data, and tone generator module performs the accompaniment. The robot control PC receives timing clock from MIDI data. This robot has “Robot Data” ( the parameter to each tone) and “Music Data”(the score for this robot). The robot control PC outputs each “Robot Data” parameters in order of “Music Data” synchronizing with the timing clock. So, this robot can play a flute.
 We developed the interface device ”Foot Pedal(Fig. 10)” to control the start timing and tempo, for human flute player can use this tool while he is playing a flute.

Fig. 10 MIDI accompaniment system	Fig. 11 Foot Pedal

This robot records the MIDI information that human played the MIDI instrument. From the information, this robot plays the flute like a round or repeats like a parrot. So we can perform as if we played in concert with this robot (Fig. 12).

Fig. 12 Ensamble using MIDI instrument

Musical Performance Activities

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