Loving The Robots In The Mosh Pit

Betcha Lou Reed's having a laugh with this one. In 1975, The NY musician released an album, Metal Machine Music, that's still regarded as either one of the worst rock'n'roll albums ever or a genre-busting excursion into noise music. Either way, it's universally agreed the thing had the ability to clear a room of humans faster than tear gas. . Also, totally undanceable. Until now that is. Thirty-odd years after its initial release, Metal Machine Music may finally have found its, um, natural audience A mashup of scientists from Queen Mary University led by Peter McOwan and Fiddian Warman's crew from the Institute of Contemporary Arts have produced a music lovin' trio of robots built to dig on the heaviest sounds around. They also get off by getting down with their punk moves. Not to be sneered at as these 2 meter plus punkbots can pogo higher than their height. The robopunks are set to debut at a three gig series at London's ICA featuring an all punk lineup. Professor Peter McOwan told the BBC the robots have been trained to like punk utilising neural networks of computer processors functioning very similar to a simple animal brain. The neural network understands the music in a similar way to a human brain, breaking down the sound into a series of frequency bands. As snotty as any uber-punk, their creators claim the robots can decide whether a song is punk or not within 30 seconds. "The robot brain, for want of a better word, was played lots of punk, reggae, disco and classical and over a period of time the robot has learned to recognise and appreciate the patterns of sound in punk music," he said. "It depends on the form at the beginning of the song. It flicks between thinking a song is punk and not punk at the start and then becomes convinced. That's about when the pogoing part jumps in, The more punk it believes the song is, the more it pogos in a "happy and frenzied way", said Professor McOwan. Which gets interesting as all involved admit taking the punkbots out to mosh amounts to a field test in sweaty palms country. "It's a real-world test of the technology. During a gig, the robot is reacting in real time to music it has never encountered before. " We feel it's reactive enough to cope with unplanned challenges.It's real-time signal processing and robotic control in a fairly hostile environment - a mosh pit with lots of sweaty punks, so we'll see." Indeed, it's hoped that audience interaction with the robopunks is limited to dancing with and not spitting beer at. Just in case, the robopunks, wearing full-on leather and chains, are tethered to the floor so can only run amok as far as the chains will allow.Which could be plenty, should a love shove be misinterpreted. But it's not all punk'n'games, professor McOwan reminds us. His field is human-robot interfaces, getting humans more comfortable with various types of droids'n'borgs. " Will the fact they can pogo make it easier for people to empathize with and accept the robots? We'll get that sort of data from the gigs. Also, hopefully people at the shows will become interested in the science behind the punkbots."