Gibson’s self-tuning
Robot Guitar is one of musical instrument technology’s most popular modern innovations. But a robot-building engineering collective at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands has taken the idea of a cyborg guitar more literally: Their autonomous guitar-playing robot won second prize at this year’s Artemis Music Orchestra competition in Europe. Sponsored by the
Artemisia Association, which is backed by a consortium that includes such technology powerhouses as Philips, Nokia, and Daimler-Chrysler, the competition “challenges participants to create devices that play real musical instruments.” Here TeamDARE’s robot plays a medley that includes Dick Dale, Green Day, and Jorgen Ingmann, its fretboard “fingered” by an array of pneumatically powered cylinders.