What’s More Metal Than a Band of Industrial Robots?

Your move, Daft Punk

September 18, 2017 9:00 am

Pour one out for the Chuck E. Cheese robot band.

But the good news is that we have a decidedly upscale replacement — a robotic symphony called Automatica, featuring a power trio of ‘bots which create a somewhat enticing take on dance rock. 

Crafted by artist Nigel Stanford, the robots were initially non-musical industrial machines used to weld metal and build cars, but were reprogrammed to rock the drums, bass, piano, synth and turntables.

“The bass and DJ were the hardest because the robots had to press down hard enough onto the strings and turntable to operate them, but not so hard as to destroy them,” Stanford tells New Atlas. “Fortunately the robots are accurate to within 0.3 mm each time.”

Automatica has now released an album and several music videos — fun fact, Stanford actually uses a camera trick in those clips to make it look like his trio is really sixteen robots strong.

We’re that much closer to a world Daft Punk predicted over a decade ago.

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