The Design of a Perceptual and Improvisational Robotic Marimba Player

The paper presents the theoretical background and the design scheme for a perceptual and improvisational robotic marimba player that interacts with human musicians in a visual and acoustic manner. Informed by an evaluation of a previously developed robotic percussionist, we present the extension of our work to melodic and harmonic realms with the design of a robotic player that listens to, analyzes and improvises pitch-based musical materials. After a discussion of the motivation for the project, theoretical background and related work, we present a set of research questions followed by our hardware and software approaches designed to address these questions. The paper concludes with a description of our plans to implement and embed these approaches in the robotic marimba player that will be used in workshops and concerts.