The robots are rising up in Atlanta!
The Atlanta Science Festival returns for its fifth year, and it launches with an event featuring a number of robots doing everything from music to stand-up comedy.
“Rise Up, Robots!” will feature a number of speakers and their computerized companions, including Oregon State University robotics professor Heather Knight with Data, a robot comedian, as well as the founder of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, Gil Weinberg. He will be bringing Shimon, a marimba-playing robot that has the ability to listen to other musicians and improvise along.
“We’re trying to present some of the ways that robots are enhancing our lives,” festival co-director and co-founder Jordan Rose tells “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes, “and helping us laugh and create.”
“I really am excited about creativity,” Weinberg says, “about trying to combine data-based learning and rule-based improvisation, trying to actually understand how we humans become creative.”
