Science News

Robot Dj Goes on Trial - and Did the Crowd Notice ?

IF there are any DJ's listening to this show they might be seriously worried by this next piece of news, which came out in last week's New Scientist- Hewlett Packard have developed a Robot-DJ that could put the human equivalent out of a job! The Robot DJ creates dance music by putting together tracks from its own personal library of drum, bass, keyboard and vocal patterns. And it can even sense what kind of vibe is coming from the dance floor! All of the clubbers wear a wrist device that monitors their behaviour so our RoboDJ can tell whether they're dancing like mad or whether they're bored and have wandered off the dance floor to get a drink. This means the RobotDJ can work out what the crowd like. It's programmed to learn from its mistakes and to put tracks together that will get the clubbers going. The best bit is that each clubber would be able to take home a CD of the music they had helped to create!

25th Nov 2001