A team at Sony Computer Science Laboratories has developed a robotic training device. Instead of traditional muscle training, this robot focuses on "sensory training."
A team at Sony Computer Science Laboratories has developed a robotic training device. Instead of traditional muscle training, this robot focuses on "sensory training."
The device is worn on a person's hand and fingers like a glove. Once programmed, it automatically moves the fingers like a puppet, without conscious control from the pianist. Instead of strengthening muscles, the device helps the body learn movements, writes the Japanese newspaper Asahi.
The Sony Computer Science Laboratories team is led by scientist Shinichi Furuya, who once dreamed of becoming a professional pianist. He practiced for 10 hours a day, but at the age of 19, an injury to his right middle finger forced him to give up his dream. So he set out to create a device that would help musicians achieve their desired level of skill without injury.
The device was tested on pianists who started playing at the age of 8 and accumulated over 10,000 hours of practice by the age of 20.
Initially, 30 pianists practiced without the robot at high speed for two weeks. As expected, their progress stalled.
The pianists then wore a robotic device that moved their fingers in the same motion four times per second for 30 minutes. The result was improved keystroke speed.
In a follow-up experiment, 60 pianists trained with a robotic device on just one hand. All participants improved their ability to perform complex, high-speed movements with their untrained hand. This phenomenon, known as “transfer learning,” occurs when learned movements on one side of the body also affect the other side.
The researchers also tested what changes occur in the brain during robotic training. After training, they applied magnetic stimulation to the motor cortex—the area responsible for controlling finger movements—and observed that the pianists’ fingers repeated the complex movements they had just experienced. This suggests that the motor cortex of the brain adapted, embedding the newly learned finger movements into the brain.
