Guitar Tuner and Song Performance Evaluation Using a NAO robot

• Published in: 2020 Latin American Robotics Symposium (LARS), 2020 Brazilian Symposium on Robotics (SBR) and 2020 Workshop on Robotics in Education (WRE) pp. 1 - 6
• Main Authors: Melo, Rodrigo, de Paula Monteiro, Rodrigo, de Oliveira, Jose Paulo G., Jeronimo, Bruno, Bastos-Filho, Carmelo J. A., de Albuquerque, Anna Priscilla, Kelner, Judith
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 09.11.2020
• Subjects: audio signal processing; Education; educational robots; edutainment; guitar tuner; Harmonic analysis; human beings; human-robot interaction; Light emitting diodes; Microphones; music; music education; music theory; music therapy; musical instruments; NAO robot; psychological disorders; pure entertainment; robot features; Robots; song performance evaluation; Tactile sensors
• DOI: 10.1109/LARS/SBR/WRE51543.2020.9307156

Music has interested human beings since the beginning of their evolution, and its benefits go far beyond pure entertainment. For example, music therapy is a well-known tool used to treat psychological disorders, such as hyperactivity. On the other hand, learning musical instruments is not a trivial task and can be frustrating. Then, children might lose their interest due to difficulties related to understanding the music theory. Aware of this scenario, the technology has been more and more employed in music education to reinforce the existing methodologies and encourage more people to learn music. Following this trend, we propose an alternative use for the NAO robot in this paper: music education. We intend to use the robot to help students tune guitars and evaluate simple songs' performance in the same instruments. We achieved this goal by combining robot features with signal processing techniques.