Robotics :  huge   success  as  Bocelli  ' conducted ' by YuMi humanoid

Florence - The benefit concert "A Breath of Hope: dallo Stradivario al Robot" [from Stradivarius to the Robot], which took place on the evening of September 12 as part of the first Pisa Robotics Festival, was a great success. Andrea Bocelli performed Schubert's Ave Maria - an unscheduled event - for the victims of the Livorno tragedy. For the first time in his life, Andrea Bocelli shared a stage with a robot: something that could only happen at the Robotics Festival! The robot in question was YuMi, and the evening at the Verdi Theatre - in aid of the Arpa Foundation, of which Bocelli is honorary chairman - was an extraordinary one. The exciting and surprise-filled evening was part of the festival promoted by the Comune di Pisa [Town Council], the Arpa Foundation, the BioRobotics Institute of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna [School of Advanced Studies] and the "E.Piaggio" Research Center, and co-promoted by the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, the University of Pisa, the Scuola Normale Superiore, the Italian National Research Council, the IRCCS Stella Maris Foundation and the EndoCAS Center of Excellence at the University of Pisa. It was the very first time that a collaborative robot made its debut as conductor of an orchestra. YuMi was created by ABB and programmed with the input of Maestro Andrea Colombini, to assist in conducting the orchestra. It accompanied Andrea Bocelli and soprano Maria Luigia Borsi under the supervision of Maestro Colombini. The concert opened with Schubert's Ave Maria: Andrea Bocelli, accompanied by Brad Repp on the violin, dedicated this piece to the victims of the recent tragedy in Livorno. After this emotional unscheduled performance, the Celtic Harp Orchestra led by conductor Fabius Constable took the audience on a journey through the sounds and moods of Celtic folk and Scottish and Irish Gaelic music, reinterpreted in a "symphonic" key. Before leaving the stage to music and YuMi's conducting of the orchestra, Franco Mosca, chairman of the Arpa Foundation and organizational chairman of the Festival, used the stage at the Verdi Theatre to reiterate the message that machines are designed to help people and work with us, and as such, are nothing to fear. 

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