Shimi is a smartphone-enabled robotic musical companion that can respond to and enhance your musical experiences. Developed in collaboration with Media Innovation Lab at IDC Herzliya, Shimi is controlled by an Android phone using its built-in sensing and music generation capabilities. This allows easy development of additional custom mobile apps.

The first application developed for Shimi allows the robot to listen to and analyze rhythms played by humans, and respond by choosing songs similar in beat and tempo from the phone music library. The robot then dances to the music using a set of expressive gestures that fit the desired tempo and genre. Future functionalities will include expressive search and discovery, interactive improvisation, gaming, and educational applications

View a video of the project here.

Publications

• Bretan, M., Hoffman, G., Weinberg, G. “Emotionally Expressive Dynamic Physical Behaviors in Robots,” In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 2014.
• Bretan, M., Weinberg, G. “Chronicles of a Robotic Musical Companion,” submitted to Proceedings of the New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference (NIME 2014), London, UK.
   

Press

• Popular Science. Meet The Next Generation Of Smartphone-Based Robot Companions February 11, 2013.
• The New York Times. Our Talking, Walking Objects January 26, 2013.
• TechCrunch. Georgia Tech’s Musical Robots July 31, 2012.