We’ve seen umpteen innovative ways the iPhone is helping people make music — from individual and small group performances all the way up to full-fledged orchestras. But what about a little help from the non-humans?

A project at Georgia Tech has developed what may be the world’s first “socially dynamic band mate.” The multiple-armed robot can play the marimbas with a musical partner, plus actually listen and improvise based on what its companion plays as well as responding to commands from an associated iPhone app, ZoozBeat (no robot required to use the app on its own to record and loop tunes as well).

The robot, lovingly dubbed Shimon, not only plays a mean set of wood blocks, but has some pretty suave dance moves to boot. Check out its signature bobbing cyclops head in the video below and tell us it doesn’t keep time better than some of the humans you know.

Tags: ai, improvisation, iphone, marimbas, music, Robot, zoozbeat

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