Robotic exoskeleton can train specialist pianoists to play faster

A robotic hand can help the exoskeleton specialist pianoists to learn to play even faster by rotating their fingers.

Robotic exoskeleton has long been used for rehabilitation of people who can no longer use their hands due to any injury or medical condition, but their use to improve the capabilities of competent people has been reduced Is.

Now, Shinichi Furuya and his colleagues in Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo have found that a robotic exoskeleton may improve the finger speed of trained pianists after a 30 -minute training session.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhn0ubr3hwu

Furuya says, “I am a pianist, but I got hurt in my hand due to excessive practice.” I was suffering from this dilemma between excessive practice and prevention of injury, so I thought, without thinking me without practice You have to think about any way to improve your skills. “

Furuya remembered that his teacher used to put his hands on him and show him how to play some pieces. He says, “I understood without using any word, easily or more easily.” This wondered if a robot could be able to repeat this effect.

Robotic exoskeleton can individually, using a separate motor attached to the base of each finger, can up to four times in a second, up to four times in a second.

To test the device, researchers recruited 118 experts pianists, who had played for at least 10,000 hours before the age of 8 and, and asked them to practice a piece for two weeks, until until That they could not improve.

Then, pianists received a 30-minute training session with exoskeleton, in which their right hand fingers were slowly or quickly rotated in various combinations of simple and complex patter The type of movement improved.

The pianists who experienced fast and complex training could better coordinate their right hand activities and could run the fingers of both hands quickly. Furuya says, with the evidence of the brain scan, it indicates that the training normally replaced the sensory cortis of the pianists to better control the activities of the fingers.

“This is the first time I have seen someone using (robotic exoskeleton) to move beyond the general abilities of dexterity, so that you can take your learning ability ahead of what you can naturally do,” Are Nathan lepora In Bristol University, Britain. “It’s a bit reverse as to why it worked, because you would have wondered that there would be really a way to learn to voluntarily move the movements, but it seems that passive activities work.”