Watch: Robot conducts orchestra in South Korea, stuns audience

In a first, South Korea's national orchestra was conducted by an android robot that stunned the sold-out crowd in Seoul on June 30. The audience was awestruck after the flawless performance by the robot in place of a human maestro.

The South Korea-made robot called EveR 6 was designed by the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology. It has a humanoid face and was programmed to replicate the movements of a human conductor.

Before starting the performance in front of nearly 1,000 people, it bowed to the audience. The orchestra was playing traditional Korean instruments. To make it more like humans, the robot even started waving its arms to control the tempo when it was performing.

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Three of the five pieces played by the orchestra were guided by EveR 6, one of which was jointly led by a human conductor, named Choi Soo-yeoul.

As quoted by BBC, Choi Soo-yeoul said: "Movements by a conductor are very detailed. The robot was able to present such detailed moves, much better than I had imagined."

He added, "I think it was a recital that showed that (robots and humans) can co-exist and complement each other, rather than one replacing the other."

The human conductor Choi also explained one disadvantage of EveR 6 as he said that it never listens.

He said, "EveR 6's critical weakness is that it cannot listen. What was a bit interesting during the rehearsal was that I and other musicians were making a lot of efforts to understand the robot as we knew it could not listen, which made us feel like we were connecting to it."

(With inputs from agencies)

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