Meet HAGUS, Your New Robotic Music Teacher

I still remember my music classes in school; it was a horrible experience for the teacher would scare the hell out of you for not having the proper notes. As a consequence I gave my music classes the moment I got my first chance. I wish it was the HAGUS (Haptic Guidance System) which taught me and tell you what; I would have been a drummer by now.

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Wondering what HAGUS is! It is a device developed by Graham Grindlay, a computer scientist form the MIT, Cambridge, US, which is like a drum kit that guides the novice through the playing. It has a drumstick attached to a combination of motors. A greenhorn has to grapple the stick with his arm, which itself sits in position with the adjacent brace and thus, the hand is guided by the action of the motors.

The HAGUS is not just useful for the beginners; even the pros can take help of it by recording a certain set of beats and can then teach it later. Graham conducted an experiment on 32 novices just to ascertain how potent the robot was and found out that they learned to hit the drum 18% more accurately as compared to mimicking a rhythm after just hearing it.

In the near future, the robotic creation form Graham Grindlay could help a whole bunch of beginners and pros in varied manners. Interested musicians could know more about the functioning of the robot at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2008 conference to be held this week.

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