Any musical piece can be played by the robot Staszek, programmed by Wojciech Świtała, a student at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków. Świtała will present this unusual engineering work during the defence of his diploma.
"Instead of a typical diploma thesis, I decided to program a Mitsubishi RV-2F-D industrial robot purchased by the university. The robot has a lot of potential, it can play selected music pieces" - student of automation and robotics told PAP on Wednesday.
The idea to create an unusual work is the effect of the student\'s interests. Wojciech graduated from the second degree of musical school and decided to combine his two passions - music and robotics. In his opinion, humanities and sciences complement each other, and art and music draw a lot from mathematics.
Robot Staszek is connected to a computer, on which a program for its operation specially written by Świtała is launched. By clicking the mouse on individual keys, the student can play the instrument using the robot. Staszek can also remember the played melody, and then save it to a file that can be played by the machine at any time. The program allows the robot to play with two fingers, hit a cymbal and present a bow. The playing tip model has been printed in 3D.
AGH spokeswoman Anna Żmuda-Muszyńska announced that the joint performance of the carol "Lulajże Jezuniu" by Wojciech and Staszek is very popular in the social media. It can be viewed on the official AGH fanpage and on the university's YouTube channel.
Staszek also caught the attention of foreign media. An article about the student and his talented robot can be seen on the website of one of the largest British classical music radio stations, Classic FM: http://www.classicfm.com/music-news/videos/robot-pianist/
The diploma thesis defence date is not set yet, but Świtała announced that the robot would remain at the university and continue to be used for scientific purposes. (PAP)
author: Beata Kołodziej
bko/ agt/ kap/
tr. RL
