Robotic limb tus drummer into three-armed musical cyborg - CNET

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Some drummers play so fast and furiously it seems like they must have three arms. A drummer test subject at the Georgia Institute of Technology actually does. The third is a robotic "smart arm" wo on the shoulder.

"The third arm provides a much richer and more creative experience, allowing the human to play many drums simultaneously with virtuosity and sophistication that are not otherwise possible," says Georgia Tech professor and project leader Gil Weinberg.

Creating a functioning robo-drum arm was a challenge. The arm not only needs to keep the beat (something computers already excel at), but it also needs to move between cymbals and drums and apply the right amount of pressure with each strike. Drummers get enough grief about keeping the volume down without having to curtail a robot arm with arena-rock aspirations.

The arm plays with a laudable amount of subtlety. It pays attention to the drummer, switching between the ride cymbal and the floor tom depending on which other parts of the drum the musician is using. It changes tempo in response to the drummer speeding up or slowing down.

Built-in accelerometers and motors help keep the robo-arm in position and on beat. The builders programmed the arm using motion-capture technology to give it human-like movements.