Abstract
This paper proposes a design of RTC (Robotics Technology Component specified by OMG) for MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), which is a standard interface for electronic musical instruments. It is also useful for entertainment robots, as well as electric musical instruments, that play a musical instrument. In face, MIDI is often used for music playing robots to enable them to cooperate with other robots and musical instruments, so it is useful to provide the interface to MIDI on common robotics frameworks. This paper describes how to handle MIDI on RTM (Robotics Technology Middleware). First, the structure of a MIDI RTC is proposed, and then, based on it, basic MIDI RTCs are implemented. These RTCs are verified by constructing a simple music system that controls a MIDI keyboard and a software synthesizer. Next, a practical music playing robot system that plays the handbells is implemented based on our proposal. The robot gave musical performances of handbells to several audiences. Through questionnaire to the audience, the effectiveness of the proposed framework is verified.
