Collaborative Music Performances with Humanoid Robots and Humans

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in entertainment robotics, with researchers exploring the creation of robots capable of performing a wide range of tasks, such as magic, art drawing, dancing, and music. This paper highlights our research in creating a musical band with humanoid robots and human musicians, with the goal of achieving natural synchronization and collaboration in musical performances. We selected two of our humanoid robots namely Polaris, a mid-sized humanoid robot, serving as the drummer, and Oscar, a Robotis-OP3 humanoid robot, serving as the keyboardist. The technical implementation included key elements like visual servoing, human-robot interaction, and ROS, which facilitated seamless communication and coordination between our humanoid robots and human musicians. The successful collaboration of our robots with human musicians can be visually and audibly appreciated through the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/pFOyt1KKCfY .