PHOTO: John Boyd

Takanishi is motivated by more than having robots produce sweet sounds. He lists three main goals for his research: to get a better understanding of human motor control, to develop robots that can mimic and respond to human emotions in order to improve human-machine interaction, and to produce humanoid robots that can perform new tasks such as caring for the elderly and the infirm.

In expanding on the first goal, Takanishi explains that having the robot mimic the actions of a human flutist will help researchers produce a mathematical model of the human oral structure. Paralleling this work, he is also developing a bipedal robot that mimics how humans walk, with the idea that this will lead to the production of a mathematical model of walking.

“So maybe 50 years from now, future engineers will be able to integrate these different models—the hands, legs, throat, mouth, etc.—and produce a really good mathematical model of the human being,” says Takanishi. “Then we can use it for producing optimum designs of everything we interact with.” Today, by contrast, design engineers have to start with assumptions about how humans move when they go about creating new designs. “So when Toyota engineers design a new car’s interior, they do it by trial and error because there is no mathematical model of humans available,” says Takanishi.

But Takanishi is not content to stick with producing physical mathematical models. He also wants to produce a mathematical model of human psychology and has begun collaborating with a psychologist at Waseda University. In other words, he wants to move beyond passive MIDI playing and produce a more autonomous robot that can interact with human members of a jazz band.

The first step along this path has been to incorporate a vision-processing algorithm into the sax-playing robot’s system that helps it track the hand of a musician partner and to respond to certain hand gestures by changing the parameters controlling its own lips, fingers, lungs, and other organs. The next step for the researchers is to develop an acoustic system that allows the robot to respond to sound cues.

Clearly there is a long way to go before anything like an orchestra of robots will be able to perform in the pit. But, Takanishi says, “I’m 52 now and I must retire at 70. I hope we can accomplish my dream by then.”