Experiments to evaluate differences in piano playing performance between humans and robots

Abstract

Many robots have been developed that play a piano. Basically, the robot performs by program. The purpose of this report is to investigate how piano playing performance changes between humans and robots. We made a three-finger robot and used it for the experiments. The finger up and down mechanism was designed by combining a four-bar link mechanism and a slider crank mechanism. The link was driven by a solenoid and a wire. A servomotor was used for the left-right movement mechanism of the finger. An electronic piano was used for the experiments. The sound pressure data collected directly from the speaker with a microphone was used for the evaluation. No MIDI data was used. It was found that the sound pressure is lower in the robot, and it is desirable to use a larger solenoid. The sound range of the robot is narrower, and it was found that the driving time of the solenoid needs to be slightly longer in order to make it closer to the human.