Scientists have created a robot that teaches zebra finches to sing. Leiden University reports.
Zoologists know that the singing of many baby birds is similar to the babbling of babies. They hear the song of other birds, memorize it, and gradually learn the exact vocalization of their species. “The researchers basically played the birds’ sounds through speakers to find out when and how birds learn to sing. Sometimes this would be added to the screen image, but singing involves much more, such as beak and throat movements, posture. That’s why young birds learn worse from one speaker than from another bird,” he says.
In this context, Katharina Riebel and her colleagues have created a robot to teach singing for research purposes. To do this, they filmed a real adult male singing on high-speed cameras, turned it into a 3D computer model, and built a robot that moved accordingly. It resembles a live bird in its movements, and the sound recording is synchronized with gesture and posture. The device was called RoboFinch.
“They go upstairs, perch next to the robot bird and chirp. More importantly, the baby birds sit still and study the RoboFinch, the RoboFinch starts to move, and we turn up the singing sounds. Looks like they’re really listening to the robot! This proves that we can use RoboFinch in our bird learning studies. In particular, we will find out if it is really important to visually observe the singing process in order to learn how to do the same,” the authors explain.
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