Encounter with a robot who played violin

6 years ago on a vacation to Japan, I arrived across a entirely useful, artistic robotic for the 1st time. I had read about robots until then and also watched documentaries on how robots in Japan are aspect of the nation’s industrial infrastructure and even domestic approach.

For that reason, I was not absolutely amazed when I engaged with a assortment of robots — humanoid leisure robots, animal robots, social robots, guard robots, and many far more.

In actuality Japan has the highest variety of industrial robots in the planet. Thanks to its substantial-tech infrastructure, and improvements in automation, the region has been capable to considerably minimize its high labour expenses over the a long time.

So I fulfilled with a robotic violinist. Incidentally, it was the spotlight of my journey to the Toyota Motor Company. The organization experienced just introduced a humanoid robot and it was all about the press.

Not absolutely sure of what to make of a equipment earning new music, I walked into the glass-panelled Toyota setting up. A modest group experienced by now collected there.

Just one gentleman, who spoke falteringly in English, whispered that the he experienced read the violin played by a group of musical robots. “It is much better than a human violinist,” he smiled.

In the functionality corridor, I seen the 5 toes tall robot vionilist. It displayed an incredible potential and played the violin with its arm and 17 pc-controlled joints and flexible fingers.

A robot enjoying a violin can be tough mainly because the instrument is pretty intricate. But our musical robot was enjoying without a treatment in the world. I was still left with a blend of amazement and marvel.

Around the years the Japanese have further enhanced these robots. In 2016, a Japanese musical band was made up solely of robots. They carried out at a packed live performance in the course of a tunes competition in Hong Kong.

All this circles us back again to the main perception of regardless of whether equipment and services will turn out to be much more automatic as we carry on our technological march.

Previously we see much more individuals are starting to be replaceable in their traces of function, which includes those people in the resourceful business. Robotics has sophisticated and now there are beings that can build will work of art from sight, main to the million greenback query: Is synthetic intelligence going to enhance our artistic and musical talents to this kind of an extent that they make human art out of date?

The answer to that is challenging and we are no way close to a problem the place the robotic songs sector, for occasion, is replacing humankind’s creative and pure talent for songs and artwork.

A dystopian long term in which people are completely replaced by robots has been envisaged in numerous guides and videos, yes, but below is my two bits: A a lot extra probable situation is one in which robots get the job done alongside individuals to boost their perform — be it in the imaginative place or at an industrial amount.

As considerably as the Google engineer is anxious, I believe it may possibly merely be a situation of him projecting his have thoughts and sentience onto the robot. I would visualize that is what’s going on right here.

It most likely — probably a several yrs or a decade from now — may be the circumstance, but most individuals would agree that there is nonetheless a really extensive way to go.

Ahmad Nazir is a UAE-dependent freelancer author