Development of an anthropomorphic musical performance robot capable of playing the flute and saxophone: Embedding pressure sensors into the artificial lips as well as the re-designing of the artificial lips and lung mechanisms

Abstract

The authors are developing anthropomorphic musical performance robots as an approach to understand the human motor control and to enhance the human–robot interaction from an engineering point of view. For this purpose; since 1990, we have developed an anthropomorphic flutist robot. As one of our long-term approaches, we aim to develop an anthropomorphic musical performance robot capable of playing different kinds of woodwind instruments, e.g. flute and saxophone. In this paper, the improvements of the mechanical design and sensing system of the Waseda Flutist Robot No. 4 Refined V (WF-4RV) are detailed. As for the sensing system, an array of sensors has been designed to detect the lip’s pressure distribution. On the other hand, the lips and lung have been re-designed to enable the flutist robot to play the saxophone.