Robot cellist debuts with symphony orchestra

It's the first time in music history a robot has performed such a feat, according to composer Jacob Muhlrad.

Combining industrial robotic arms with 3D-printed parts, the robot cello was designed and developed by researcher and composer Fredrik Gran.

Muhlrad says it does not employ artificial intelligence but was programmed by Gran using Muhlrad’s musical score, specially written for the robot.

In an age of increasingly sophisticated AI and the fear that one day humans will be made obsolete, the classical music world has remained relatively unfazed, with the prospect of a robotic symphony orchestra the stuff of a sci-fi movie.

Now though, that illusion has all changed, as a robot made its debut playing the cello with a symphony orchestra.

In a mesmerizing piece written by Swedish-born contemporary classical composer and producer Jacob Mühlrad, the lines between acoustic and electronic music are skilfully blurred in this performance which took place in the Malmö Live Concert Hall.

In this clip of Jacob’s new piece, ‘Veer (bot)’, the orchestra creates a serene and hypnotic soundworld, before the cello joins and complements this with a sustained solo and laconic passage. The contrast between the unison shimmering of the orchestra and the lamenting solo voice of the robotic cellist creates a powerful visual and auditory spectacle. It seems as if the robot is trying to tell us something through its lonely song, which in turn makes you question whether it is possible for a robot to feel emotions if it can elicit them from an audience.

For Jacob, whose music draws on global and multi-facetted influences, this project is not about showing how technology could theoretically replace musicians, but rather a study of the cello’s possibilities when played by a tool with a very different anatomy from a human, and of how technology can complement human musicianship when man and machine performs side by side.

The robot will also perform in the US this December in this groundbreaking collaboration between a robot and a symphony orchestra.