Human-Robot Percussion Ensemble: Anticipation on the Basis of Visual Cues

Visual cues-based anticipation is a fundamental aspect of human-human interaction, and it plays an important role in the time-demanding medium of group music. In this article, we explore the importance of visual gesture anticipation in music performance involving humans and robots. We study the particular case in which a human percussionist is playing a four-piece percussion set, and a robot musician is playing either the marimba or a three-piece percussion set. We use computer vision to embed anticipation in the robotic response to the human gestures.