Dance with me, the robot said

A musical robot uses cellphone computing power – which could be the forerunner for home-help.

By ADAM GONN
Dance with me the robot said (photo credit: Tovbot.com)
Dance with me the robot said
(photo credit: Tovbot.com)
We all know that in the future our lives will be full of robots performing various tasks to make our life easier. Will the first one be a music-playing, dancing robot called Shimi? The robot is the brainchild of the four founders of Tovbot (Tovbot.com): Guy Hoffman of the School of Communication at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya (IDC), Gil Weinberg at the Center for Music Technology at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Roberto Aimi and Ian Campbell. The technology was developed at IDC in collaboration with Georgia Tech.
Once you plug in your smartphone, Shimiwill start playing music from your library and “dance” to the beat of the song by moving its feet and head. If you clap your hand on the table in front of Shimi it can detect the beat and find a song in your library with a corresponding beat and change its dance moves to fit the rhythm of the new song.
“A previous robot we worked on was called Shimon, which is a large improvising robot that plays jazz by listening to a human and then improvising based on what the human in playing,” Dr. Hoffman tells The Report .
He says people loved Shimon’s reaction to music even more than his ability to play it. Tovbot has scaled down Shimon into Shimi to make it more affordable, so more people can enjoy having a musical robot. Shim is expected to retail at $100-$300.
Beyond the entertainment value, Hoffman says the same technology used to power Shimi will in future be the basis for practical assistance robotics that will take over many home chores and jobs that can be automated. He says the growth of cellphone technology and cloud-based computing have paved the way for more applications and a new direction in home robotics.
“There is this possibility now to make robots that are based on cellphones, which is a new technology opportunity. The future of home robotics has a lot to do with the fact that our cellphones are such powerful computers,” says Hoffman.
Since all the computing is carried out on the smartphone there is no need for Shimi to have its own processing power, making it possible to develop a cheaper and simpler product than just a couple of years ago.
In developing Shimi, Tovbot has entered a new field, trying to utilize the new possibilities of today’s interconnected world, linking smartphones with a robotic infrastructure and then creating a robot that could perform on several levels using very few moving parts.
Shimi has just five motors – a major challenge for the designers. “Previously I worked with robots that had 70 motors in them – 32 in the face alone – so you can have very expressive behavior,” says Hoffman. “If I have just five motors with joints that can move, how I can still make it expressive, adorable and cool?” Niv Lilien, a former editor of the Ynet Internet site computer section, tells The Report that in combining robotics and smartphones, “Tovbot’s Shimi seems like an interesting concept.”
“It has the look of the next Christmas sales hit, but the idea of integrating high-end robotics with the smartphone’s sensors and processing power presents many exciting opportunities for the next generation of day-to-day robotic companions,” says Lilien.