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Watch a Drummer with a Dual-Stick Robotic Arm Play His First Live Show

It's nothing short of remarkable.

A month ago we first heard about the robotic drumming prosthetic used by drummer Jason Barnes, and just this weekend Barnes put on his first performance with a live band. It's nothing short of remarkable.

The arm was designed by the team of Prof. Gil Weinberg, founding director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, to replace a previous prosthesis that Barnes used for drumming. The device is a marvel, with controls for a pair of drumsticks, one controlled by Barnes himself, and another by electronic controls, especially for rolls, as well as an algorithm-based control that can help Barnes drop in fills.

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Before the concert, Barnes explained that a few weeks after having his right hand amputated, he decided to fight his boredom by seeing if he could tape a drumstick to his forearm and still play drums. While he says the first few minutes he played gave him "excruciating pain," Barnes said that it gave him the inspiration to try and continue drumming.

But a simple stick attached to his arm wouldn't do the trick, as drumming naturally requires far more complicated movements. According to Barnes, after assessing his skills with his drum teacher, Eric Sanders of the Atlanta Institute of Music and Media, he mentioned that he'd have a lot more control if he had some sort of robotic prosthetic.

Sanders happened to come across Weinberg's Shimon project, which is a robotic marimba player that's capable of improvisation, and reach out to see if they might work together.

"Dr. Weinberg had some initial ideas, but I also had contacts in different departments and that changed the original plan; so did the grants," Sanders said in an email. "We’re all still working to create other prosthetics for Jason, but what Dr. Weinberg and his team of geniuses have come up with in such a short time is absolutely remarkable!"

Weinberg says that, at the time, he was wondering about what artificial creativity would mean for robots. It's a fair point; it's great to have a machine algorithm that can improvise along with humans, but, as Weinberg explains, what happens when a creative robot and the singularity converge? At the very least, robots that can actually think for themselves are a ripe sci-fi scenario.

When Barnes emailed, Weinberg found an answer: keep creative AI connected to a human body. As you'll see, Barnes is now able to play drums with a wide range of control over his main stick, which is controlled by his own muscles. And by combining the second, AI-controlled stick, Barnes is able to play multiple rhythms at once—and, if need be, faster than any normal human.