Humanoid robots join human musicians for synchronized musical performances

PeerJ

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

In a fascinating blend of technology and artistry, researchers present a study in PeerJ Computer Science, showcasing how humanoid robots can collaborate seamlessly with human musicians during live musical performances. This innovative work highlights the evolving role of robotics in entertainment and creativity.

The study introduces a human-robot musical band featuring Polaris, a mid-sized humanoid robot as a drummer, and Oscar, a Robotis-OP3 humanoid robot as a keyboardist. These robots performed alongside human musicians, achieving natural synchronization and collaboration through advanced robotic systems. The project leverages cutting-edge technologies, including human-robot interaction, and the Robot Operating System (ROS), to ensure fluid communication and timing between the robots and their human counterparts.

“Our goal was to go beyond technical precision and explore how robots and humans can interact creatively in real-time performances,” said the research team. “Music is a universal language, and integrating humanoid robots into this space not only enhances entertainment but also pushes the boundaries of robotics and human-robot collaboration.” 

Key Innovations of the Research:

1. Advanced Synchronization Techniques:
   The robots utilized multimodal sensory integration—visual, auditory, and predictive systems—to synchronize their performances with human musicians effectively.
2. Human-Robot Interaction:
   Through refined communication protocols, the robots adapted to human cues, creating a more natural and responsive collaboration.
3. Technical Integration:
   The system utilized ROS for seamless coordination between hardware and software, enabling the robots to interpret musical notes, predict beats, and adjust their performance in real-time.

A Showcase of Creative Robotics

The success of this project was demonstrated at the Humanoid Application Challenge (HAC) competition, where the band’s performance received widespread acclaim for its precision, creativity, and innovation. A video of the performance is available at YouTube.

Future Directions

Looking ahead, the researchers aim to enhance the robots’ capabilities further by:

• Refining Synchronization Algorithms: Improving offset timing and beat recognition to achieve even greater harmony in live performances.
• Social Interaction: Enabling robots to engage meaningfully with audiences by interpreting musical cues and responding to social interactions.
• Musical Improvisation: Introducing heuristic and predictive models for dynamic, real-time improvisation.

Why It Matters

The study highlights the potential of humanoid robots in creative fields like music, where real-time interaction, adaptability, and artistry are essential. Beyond entertainment, this research lays the groundwork for broader applications of human-robot collaboration, including education, therapy, and public engagement.

---

Journal

PeerJ Computer Science

DOI

10.7717/peerj-cs.2632 

Article Title

Integrating humanoid robots with human musicians for synchronized musical performances

 

Scientists at UMass Amherst engineer plant-based method of 'precious' mineral mining

Their research manipulates the superplant Camelina sativa to accumulate nickel, provide oil for biofuel and clean contaminated soil

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Faceboo

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Om Parkash Dhankher in the greenhouse with the Camelina sativa plants (left) that he’s working to turn into nickel hyperaccumulators.

view more 

Credit: John Solem/UMass Amherst

January 27, 2025

AMHERST, Mass. — As unassuming plant—considered a noxious weed by some—may be the key to fueling a green economy in the U.S. University of Massachusetts Amherst scientists are working with Camelina sativa, a member of the mustard family, to enhance a trio of the plant’s superpowers: absorbing trace amounts of the critical mineral nickel from the soil and improving the soil’s fertility, storing that nickel in its biomass where it can be harvested and extracted for use, and, in its seeds, providing a rich source of the oil needed for biofuels.

While we may know what technology we need to transition the U.S. to a green economy, having the raw materials to do so is another matter entirely, especially when it comes to the critical materials and minerals that are the backbone of energy-efficient batteries and electrical vehicles.  All plants absorb nutrients and minerals from the soil and incorporate them into their leaves and stems, but there are some, known as “hyperaccumulators,” that have evolved the ability to accumulate specific minerals in staggering quantities.

These hyperaccumulators are the specialty of Om Parkash Dhankher, professor of molecular biology and phytoremediation in UMass Amherst’s Stockbridge School of Agriculture, who has spent the last few decades studying how plants can be used to absorb toxic elements from the soil, cleaning it through a technique called phytoremediation.

It’s only a short step from phytoremediation to phytomining, which is when the hyperaccumulated mineral is then harvested from the plant for use in industrial or manufacturing applications.

One plant in particular, Odontarrhena (formerly Alyssum murale), is known to hyperaccumulate nickel, a critical electrical component that is in short supply in the U.S. There is currently only one company actively mining nickel in the states in a conventional mine, despite the fact that nearly one million acres contain trace amounts of nickel in the topsoil. The vast majority of nickel comes from Indonesia and is processed elsewhere in the world. Because nickel is a low-level toxin, the soils in which it occurs are typically barren.

While it might seem that growing Alyssum in the U.S. would be an obvious fix — up to 3% of the plant’s biomass can be made up of nickel — Dhankher notes that it is slow-growing, low biomass, difficult to manage and takes a comparatively long nine months until it is ready to harvest. The upshot is that it takes an awful lot of Alyssum to yield a useful amount of nickel, and Alyssum is also considered an invasive species.

None of this is true of Camelina sativa, a plant that is already in wide cultivation in the U.S. Two to three crops of Camelina can be grown and harvested in the time it takes to grow a single crop of Alyssum, and its seeds are a rich source of the oil that is a core ingredient in biofuels. Thanks to Dhankher’s previous research, we now know how to enhance Camelina’s oil-producing capabilities.

“Our idea” says Dhankher, “is to determine which genes and proteins are responsible for Alyssum’s nickel hyperaccumulation, then re-engineer Camelina so that it, too, can hyperaccumulate nickel. We also want to determine which soil amendments will optimize the engineered Camelina’s ability to pull even more nickel from the soil.”

“The availability of nickel in the soil available for plant-uptake is determined by soil factors and soil health,” says Dhankher’s co-investigator, Baoshan Xing, Distinguished Professor and director of the Stockbridge School at UMass Amherst. “We will characterize these nickel-bearing soils in detail and improve the soil conditions accordingly to enhance the availability of nickel and improve the plant’s uptake of the element for hyperaccumulation.”

The result would be a minimally invasive way to extract trace amounts of nickel, returning the soil’s arability, and providing increased stocks for biofuel, all without relying on a complex and ever-evolving geopolitical situation.

“We believe that there is currently enough nickel in the barren soil in the U.S. to supply us for 50 years of phytomining,” says Dhankher. “We won’t be able to supply all of the nickel the economy needs,” he adds, “but our method could account for 20 to 30 percent of the projected demand.”

Dhankher and Xing have been awarded $1,297,055 by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project’s agency to develop this new strain of nickel-loving Camelina.

“As we know, we are in the era of renewable energy,” says Dhankher. “Conventional mining in monumentally destructive, but phytomining can give us a sustainable, domestic supply of nickel to help fuel the green transition.”

A media kit, with images and all credit and caption info is available here.

 

On the way to a “new” second

Novel optical atomic clock achieves record accuracy in comparison measurement towards redefining the second

Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

The ion trap of the new In+/Yb+-crystal clock in its vacuum chamber. The Ions are trapped in the gap that can be seen in the middle of the picture between the gold electrodes (target). A shown-up picture: a crystal from indium- (pink) and ytterbium (blue) ions.

view more 

Credit: Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt

The next generation of atomic clocks “ticks” with the frequency of a laser. This is about 100 000 times faster than the microwave frequencies of the caesium clocks which are generating the second at present. These optical clocks are still being assessed, but already now, some are 100 times more accurate than caesium clocks. They will therefore become the future basis for the worldwide definition of the second in the International System of Units (SI). However, these optical clocks must first prove their reliability by being tested repeatedly and by participating in worldwide comparisons. The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), Gemany's national metrology institute, is one of the global leading institutions and has, up to now, developed an impressive series of different optical clocks – among which are single ion clocks and optical lattice clocks. Now, such high accuracy has also been demonstrated in a new type of clock, which has the potential to measure time and frequency 1000 times more accurately than the caesium clocks that currently realize the SI second. For this purpose, the new ion crystal clock was compared to other optical clocks and achieved a new accuracy record. The results of the measurement campaign have been published in the current issue of Physical Review Letters.

In an optical atomic clock, atoms are irradiated by laser light. If the laser has the correct frequency, the atoms change their quantum-mechanical state. For this purpose, the atoms have to be shielded from any external influences – and remaining influences must be measured accurately. This works very well for optical clocks with trapped ions. The ions can be trapped by means of electrical fields and kept in place within a few nanometers in vacuum. Thanks to this outstanding control and isolation we can get very close to an ideal, undisturbed quantum system. Ion clocks have therefore already reached relative systematic uncertainties beyond the 18th decimal place. Such a clock, if it had been ticking since the Big Bang, would have lost one second at most.

To date, these clocks have been operated with one individual clock ion. Its weak signal must be measured over long periods of time – up to two weeks – in order to measure the frequency with such a low uncertainty. To exploit the full potential, it would even require measuring times of more than three years.

The newly developed clock will drastically shorten this measuring time by parallelizing: Multiple ions - often of different kinds - will be simultaneously trapped in one trap. By interacting, they form a new, crystalline structure. “In addition, this concept allows the strengths of different types of ions to be combined”, explains PTB physicist Jonas Keller: “We use indium ions as they have favorable properties to achieve high accuracy. For efficient cooling, ytterbium ions are added to the crystal.”

One of the challenges was the development of an ion trap that provides high-accuracy conditions for such a spatially extended crystal, rather than just a single ion. Another challenge was to develop experimental methods to position the cooling ions within the crystal. Research group leader Tanja Mehlstäubler and her team were able to solve these issues with impressive new ideas: The clock currently reaches an accuracy close to the 18th decimal place.

Two further optical and one microwave clock systems of PTB participated in the comparisons: a single-ion ytterbium clock, a strontium lattice clock, and a caesium fountain clock. The ratio of the indium clock to the ytterbium clock is the first to reach an overall uncertainty lower than the limit required for such comparisons by the roadmap for the redefinition of the second.

The concept promises a new generation of highly stable and accurate optical ion clocks. It is also applicable to other types of ions and opens up new opportunities of entirely new clock concepts such as the use of quantum many-body states or the cascaded interrogation of several ensembles.

This work was partly funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the framework of the Quantum Frontiers Cluster of Excellence and of the DQ-mat Collaborative Research Center.
es/ptb

Original scientific publication
H. N. Hausser, J. Keller, T. Nordmann, N. M. Bhatt, J. Kiethe, H. Liu, I. M. Richter, M. von Boehn, J. Rahm et al. : 115In+−172Yb+ Coulomb Crystal Clock with 2.5 × 10−18 Systematic Uncertainty. Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023201. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.023201

---

A scheme of the clock comparison: The new indium-ytterbium crystal clock was compared with the strontium lattice clock, the ytterbium single-ion clock and the caesium fountain clock of PTB.

A crystal consisting of indium (pink) and ytterbium (blue) ions. The figure shows the fluorescence of the single atoms, which is detected to determine the quantum state. The colors have been adjusted; the fluorescence of both species is in the ultraviolet spectral range.

Credit

Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt

Journal

Physical Review Letters

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.023201 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

115In+−172Yb+ Coulomb Crystal Clock with 2.5 × 10−18 Systematic Uncertainty

Article Publication Date

16-Jan-2025

 

Research: Automatic text message alerts would potentially result in U.K. banking customer savings up to $300 million

Low-income customers, frequent over drafters & the financially vulnerable could significantly benefit from SMS

Boston College

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskMessageWhatsApp

Chestnut Hill, Mass. (1/13/2025) — A study published inThe Journal of Finance (December 26, 2024) found that automatically enrolling United Kingdom banking customers into text message alerts reduced overdrafts and unpaid item charges by 4-to-19 percent, resulting in an annual, nationwide potential consumer savings range of nearly $213 million to approximately $300 million at today’s exchange rate.

The researchers measured the savings in British pound sterling at £170-to-£240 million at the time.

The at-scale field experiment, conducted by a multi-national research team led by Boston College Economics Associate Professor Michael D. Grubb, examined bank transactions at the six largest retail banks in the United Kingdom (U.K.) during 2017. Titled “Sending Out an SMS: Automatic Enrollment Experiments for Overdraft Alerts,” the study indicated that low-income customers, frequent over drafters, and financially vulnerable consumers — who policymakers most want to assist — can significantly benefit from text alerts.

“Bank overdrafts are one of the most common but one of the most expensive forms of consumer borrowing,” Grubb noted.  “Automatic enrollment in just-in-time alerts provides a large consumer benefit without offsetting consumer harm.”

An overdraft occurs when a consumer has an insufficient account balance to pay for a transaction, but the financial institution pays it. Typically, a U.K. bank pays an overdraft transaction by extending overdraft credit, i.e., using its own funds and then requiring the consumer to repay.

At the time, overdrafts in the U.K. incurred a mix of daily charges, ranging from $6.00 to $12.00, and interest rates of 11-67 percent, in addition to unpaid item charges of $6.00 to $31.00 per declined transaction. 

In 2017, overdraft and unpaid item charges in the U.K. totaled an estimated $3.26 billion (£2.6 billion). In the nation’s poorest areas, the one percent heaviest users spent $468 on average on unarranged overdraft charges in 2016.

Adjusted for default risk, the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority — a financial regulatory body — estimated that the average overdraft mark-ups — the amounts added to the cost to drive profit — are three times higher than those for credit card lending or unsecured personal loans.  Additionally, previous studies demonstrated that consumers often have access to lower cost sources of liquidity at the time of their overdraft borrowing, which they could use rather than incurring overpriced overdraft fees. 

According to the researchers, inattention to account balances is the principal theory for overdrafts, so requiring banks to automatically enroll their customers into text message alerts should reduce overdraft fees, a policy they note was implemented in 2018 by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) — the U.K.’s principal competition regulator — and extended by the FCA, which expanded the mandate to cover more banks and more overdrafts.

They noted, however, that their examination does not reveal what the banks’ pricing response would be once the alerts were installed across the market. 

“Since alert mandates represent a regulated cut in revenues from hidden charges, a natural concern is that banks will raise overdraft fees or other charges to offset the lost revenue,” Grubb said.  “Nevertheless, we are optimistic that U.K. retail banks will respond to the regulated cut in hidden charges similarly to U.S. retail banks, which did not adjust prices to offset the 2009 CARD Act reductions in hidden credit card charges.” 

The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 is a U.S. federal law that aims to protect consumers from unfair credit card practices.

The researchers emphasized, however, that text message alerts were not a panacea.

“Bank customers had sufficient financial resources to avoid over 50 percent of the overdrafts by drawing on savings or lower interest credit card accounts,” they noted. “However, text message alerts reduced charges by much less than 50 percent, suggesting that banks can still profit off consumers’ mistakes. While text messages are beneficial, this shows that additional measures are necessary to fully protect consumers.”

In a directly related development, on December 12, 2024, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced the finalization of its rule addressing overdraft fees. Effective October 1, 2025, financial institutions with more than $10 billion in assets can choose to cap their overdraft fees at $5 — a steep drop from the average fee of approximately $35 per transaction — or limit the fee to an amount that covers the lenders’ costs or charge any fee but disclosing the loan’s interest rate.  Given the upcoming administration change, the rule’s fate is unclear.

In addition to Grubb, the research team included Darragh Kelly, a senior apps growth manager at Google Ireland; Jeroen Nieboer, a London School of Economics fellow and a data science and machine learning manager at Deliveroo, a British online food delivery company; Matthew Osborne, an associate professor of marketing at University of Toronto; and Jonathan Shaw, a technical specialist at the FCA, and a research associate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a London-based independent economic research institute.

# # #

---

Journal

The Journal of Finance

DOI

10.1111/jofi.13404 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Sending Out an SMS: Automatic Enrollment Experiments for Overdraft Alerts

Article Publication Date

26-Dec-2024

COI Statement

U.K. FCA has an interest in this stidy

 

Reading signs: New method improves AI translation of sign language

Additional data can help differentiate subtle gestures, hand positions, facial expressions

Osaka Metropolitan University

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Adding data such as hand and facial expressions, as well as skeletal information on the position of the hands relative to the body, to the information on the general movements of the signer’s upper body improves word recognition.

view more 

Credit: Osaka Metropolitan University

Sign languages have been developed by nations around the world to fit the local communication style, and each language consists of thousands of signs. This has made sign languages difficult to learn and understand. Using artificial intelligence to automatically translate the signs into words, known as word-level sign language recognition, has now gained a boost in accuracy through the work of an Osaka Metropolitan University-led research group.

Previous research methods have been focused on capturing information about the signer’s general movements. The problems in accuracy have stemmed from the different meanings that could arise based on the subtle differences in hand shape and relationship in the position of the hands and the body.

Graduate School of Informatics Associate Professor Katsufumi Inoue and Associate Professor Masakazu Iwamura worked with colleagues including at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee to improve AI recognition accuracy. They added data such as hand and facial expressions, as well as skeletal information on the position of the hands relative to the body, to the information on the general movements of the signer’s upper body.

“We were able to improve the accuracy of word-level sign language recognition by 10-15% compared to conventional methods,” Professor Inoue declared. “In addition, we expect that the method we have proposed can be applied to any sign language, hopefully leading to improved communication with speaking- and hearing-impaired people in various countries.”

The findings were published in IEEE Access.

###

About OMU

Established in Osaka as one of the largest public universities in Japan, Osaka Metropolitan University is committed to shaping the future of society through “Convergence of Knowledge” and the promotion of world-class research. For more research news, visit https://www.omu.ac.jp/en/ and follow us on social media: X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

---

Journal

IEEE Access

DOI

10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3494878 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Word-Level Sign Language Recognition With Multi-Stream Neural Networks Focusing on Local Regions and Skeletal Information