From a member of the robot team (Score 4, Informative)

A colleague told me of this discussion and suggested that I give a brief explanation of the motivation for this project. I'm from the Music Acoustics Group at UNSW. We maintain a large web site http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/music/ for the benefit of musicians, students and interested others. It has more details on the robot. The introduction on our site is aimed at a good high school student, but if you go deep enough it leads to our technical research papers. - Most of the time, we study real musical instruments, real musicians, the voice and the ear. Some of this is sponsored by companies (instrument makers, a medical device company, a museum), but much of it is curiosity research. - For us, the robot project complements one of our areas in which we study real musicians and how they play. We want to know, in some detail, why a real musician plays better and makes a better sound than a beginner. (Curiosity research, but with an obvious application in music teaching and sometimes instrument design.) - The robot is a tool for testing our understanding of the clarinet-player system. The current version is very primitive: it was put together in a hurry for the competition. But in the next year or so we shall use it to understand a range of questions: * Why does a clarinet reed squeak? How can you stop it? * What are the important parameters in a good sound? * How important are tongue position, soft palate, glottis? What are the best combinations? * How important is lip damping, and how does it depend on the reed? * What are the important parameters in fine pitch control? * What are the important parameters in expressive performance? * What is necessary to convey warmth? * What is necessary to follow a conductor? - To some of these, of course, we already have answers from our previous research. But we want to have more confidence in those answers. - So for the Music Acoustics Lab, this robot is a very useful tool. It was also a good project for two undergraduate students (Paul and Jean) in physics: a project that required a range of experimental and analytical techniques. The other groups in the robot team have different motivations. - For Mechanical Engineering, this robot was an interesting challenge. It was a good undergraduate student project for Kim: a range of questions to answer and difficulties to overcome. - It was also an interesting challenge for Mark, a Computer Engineering student Mark. In fact all of the students involved were highly motivated, worked well, learned a lot -- and had a good time. For university staff, this alone would justify the project. - For NICTA (a national research centre in ICT), the contest was a formal challenge. A good way of displaying expertise and applications in embedded systems, and a good way of inspiring students. (John Judge is from NICTA). - The team details and some more discussion is at http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/clarinetrobot.html Music Acoustics.