Led by the vision of two academics at the University of Manchester, Engineer Professor Danielle George MBE and citizen scientist Dr Erinma Ochu MBE, who with the help of an esteemed techie team, alongside supporters and the tech-loving Mancunians, brought a musical orchestra of the future to life.
It has recently had its first successful debut performance on stage at the Euroscience Open Forum in Manchester and audiences are now thirsty for more performances in the future.
The project has been a crowd-sourced, work-in-progress that looks a lot like a scene from the early AI Hollywood film "Short Circuit" or maybe even a friendlier version of "Terminator"… with the only intention of these robots being to hit crowds with music and rhythm.
The idea came about when Manchester became the first British city to be awarded the title of European City of Science for 2016. Professor George wanted to celebrate this with a vision she had for a project involving the whole city and thus this crowd-sourced citizen-tech project was born.
"This seems to be the first of its kind. It has all been about getting the citizens of Manchester together to be part of the research, and part of one big story. Effectively we've been trying to deliver an engineering project in way you'd never usually approach it, via crowd sourcing," Professor George said.
The initiative's goal was to create an environmentally friendly orchestra made out of recycled materials and constructed into real robots playing actual instruments. A publicity call was made to all the people of Manchester to get involved by salvaging and donating scrap materials, building robots, writing code or sharing their musical expertise.
Over 300 adults and children have been involved so far in bringing the robot orchestra to become rhythmic, yet artificially intelligent musicians.
It was deemed as rather fitting that a city which has built an international reputation as much on its game-changing scientific discovery as on its seminal music scene, should combine the two as Britain's first European City of Science.
Professor Danielle George enjoyed the moment she and her team lifted the curtain on the robot orchestra, a project that she started dreaming up more than a year ago with citizen science innovator Dr Erinma Ochu MBE
"I want to show how everyone can discover the secret engineer inside themselves — and build an amazing machine from their imagination," said Professor George, Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering at the University.
"A new musical engineering revolution has begun with this project we feel and I want to showcase the ingenuity, creativity and revolutionary spirit of the people of Manchester and to explore how a city might creatively re-engineer and spread environmental and creative practices through performance."
Over recent months a series of open workshops have taken place where the public came out to work alongside engineering students and professionals to develop some unique musical machines.
There were no specifications — with imagination of people being the only limit. So far, the team has seen some amazing ideas come from people aged from eight to 80.
"As long as they were robust enough, all the robots have become part of the orchestra, whatever they sound like or whatever they play," said Professor George.
Talking about the future of how the project is likely to evolve, Professor George went on to add:
"We want this project to have a legacy, not just the robots, but this idea that you can bring people together and that it's good to tinker with things. It's absolutely fine to fail along the way, to learn from those failures, to work together and enjoy the creativity."
In October 2016, there will be another performance at Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry which will involve the famous Halle Orchestra, who have also composed a piece of music for the robots to play as well as other orchestras, and it promises to be an exciting spectacle.
Robot groupies can follow this unique journey of pop innovation via:www.robotorchestra.co.uk
