Design of a Drumming Robot Based on MIDI Music Data

Abstract

Humanoid robots capable of performing music particularly drum-playing robots have great potential in entertainment and human-robot interaction. While our previous studies have focused on expressing human-like movements using a large number of degrees of freedom (DOFs), this study proposes a minimally designed and low degree-of-freedom humanoid robot capable of performing drum sequences. We developed an event sequence generator that converts MIDI music data into the event sequence format executable for the developed humanoid robot and automatically assign the hands and instruments to be played. We also created a trajectory generator consisting of several modules. The joint angles are generated in the task space and joint space, and then synthesized accordingly. To address potential self-collisions during fast and complex motions, a real-time collision prediction algorithm based on the Separating Axis Theorem (SAT) is applied. If detected, the collision avoidance module changes the event sequence or task space trajectory following several steps. Experimental results show that even with a simple hardware configuration, it can stably and accurately perform complex drum patterns.