Robotic musicians perform with humans.

Robotic Musicianship

Robotic Musicianship

The Robotic Musicianship group aims to facilitate meaningful musical interactions between humans and machines, leading to novel musical experiences and outcomes. In our research, we combine computational modeling approaches for perception, interaction, and improvisation, with novel approaches for generating acoustic responses in physical and visual manners.

The motivation for this work is based on the hypothesis that real-time collaboration between human and robotic players can capitalize on the combination of their unique strengths to produce new and compelling music. Our goal is to combine human qualities, such as musical expression and emotions, with robotic traits, such as powerful processing, the ability to perform sophisticated mathematical transformations, robust long-term memory, and the capacity to play accurately without practice.

Robotic Musicianship Projects

FOREST robots performing to music.


FOREST is the performative outcome of an NSF-funded project that enhances trust between humans and robots through sound.
A man demonstrates the Skywalker project.


This project aims to let amputees play musical instruments using a prosthetic hand.
Shimon playing the marimba.


Shimon is an improvising robotic marimba player designed to create musical interactions with humans.
A man demonstrating the drumming prosthesis.

Robotic Drumming Prosthesis

The prosthesis attaches to amputees, allowing this technology to be embedded into humans, using two drumsticks.
A man demonstrates the robotic third drumming arm.

Robotic Drumming Third Arm

This project explores how a shared control paradigm can influence and potentially enhance performance.
An image of Shimi.


This smartphone-enabled robotic musical companion can respond to and enhance your musical experiences.


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