Robaton is the Master's Thesis project between myself and fellow Berklee Valencia Master's Degree student, Pierluigi Barberis. It is a combination of a Virtual Conducting Experience, developed by myself, and a music-making robot, dubbed "Curiosibot," created by Pierluigi.
The Virtual Conducting Experience is a combination of hardware and software allowing the end user to experience conducting a virtual ensemble through hand gestures. The hardware is an Xbox Kinect, and I developed the software in Max 6 and Max for Live. My software communicates with an existing piece of free software called Synapse.
Curiosibot plays the crotales with solenioids connected to an Arduino board, which is controlled via Max 6. Curiosibot also has a mechanical "head" which follows the music and interacts with the conductor.
The Robaton project was featured at the Sonar+D festival in Barcelona in June 2014 and at the Príncipe Felipe Museum of Science in Valencia in July 2014. Robaton was also featured in the book The Impact of Technology in Music by Matt Anniss, published by Heinemann-Raintree in 2016.