Dr Richard Savery, Research Fellow at Macquarie University, explores how the creativity and skills of expert musicians can shape the next generation of intelligent machines. Musicians excel at recognising patterns, making split-second decisions, and conveying emotion abilities that are also essential for everyday robots, from household assistants interpreting human cues to autonomous cars navigating busy streets.
By studying how musicians improvise and perform together, Dr Savery uncovers principles to make human–machine interaction more natural, trustworthy, and expressive. His research involves building robot musicians that rap, drum, and play melodies in diverse settings—from concert halls with professional performers to museums with children. By observing how people interact with these robots over extended periods, he gathers insights into how groups of humans and machines can learn to collaborate.
These findings are helping design better algorithms for robotics in homes, factories, and beyond—where robots may one day communicate through musical cues. By uniting music, AI, and robotics, Dr Savery’s work is creating a more creative and human-centred technological future.