Humanoid Musical Robots as Experimental Interfaces for Music-Evoked Emotion
arXiv:2608.20433v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Advances in technology have led to increasingly sophisticated musical humanoid robots. However, their use has largely been limited to performance and related research in human-robot interaction. In this position paper, we propose a novel perspective: musical humanoid robots as experimental interfaces for investigating music-evoked emotions. We argue that current research is constrained by paradigms relying on pre-recorded auditory stimuli, which fail to capture the multimodal, embodied, and interactive nature of real-world musical experience. Building on existing theories of music cognition and emotion, we identify mechanisms that require controlled manipulation of both acoustic and non-acoustic variables. We show that humanoid robots are well-suited as they enable parametric control of performance variables, reproducibility across trials, and the decoupling and recombination of auditory, visual, and interactive components. We illustrate the technical feasibility of this perspective through a case study of the WAseda Saxophonist Robot 5 (WAS-5), demonstrating reproducible control of acoustic and interaction variables that are prerequisites for future music-emotion experiments. Our work positions musical humanoid robots as a methodological platform that enables future controlled investigations of music-evoked emotions.
-->
[Submitted on 20 Aug 2026]
Title:Humanoid Musical Robots as Experimental Interfaces for Music-Evoked Emotion
View a PDF of the paper titled Humanoid Musical Robots as Experimental Interfaces for Music-Evoked Emotion, by Vincent K.M. Cheung and Jia-Yeu Lin
View PDF HTML (experimental)
Abstract:Advances in technology have led to increasingly sophisticated musical humanoid robots. However, their use has largely been limited to performance and related research in human-robot interaction. In this position paper, we propose a novel perspective: musical humanoid robots as experimental interfaces for investigating music-evoked emotions. We argue that current research is constrained by paradigms relying on pre-recorded auditory stimuli, which fail to capture the multimodal, embodied, and interactive nature of real-world musical experience. Building on existing theories of music cognition and emotion, we identify mechanisms that require controlled manipulation of both acoustic and non-acoustic variables. We show that humanoid robots are well-suited as they enable parametric control of performance variables, reproducibility across trials, and the decoupling and recombination of auditory, visual, and interactive components. We illustrate the technical feasibility of this perspective through a case study of the WAseda Saxophonist Robot 5 (WAS-5), demonstrating reproducible control of acoustic and interaction variables that are prerequisites for future music-emotion experiments. Our work positions musical humanoid robots as a methodological platform that enables future controlled investigations of music-evoked emotions.
Comments: Opinion paper accepted for presentation at the Sound and Music Computing (SMC) Conference 2026 (5-7 November in Zagreb, Croatia)
Subjects:
Robotics (cs.RO); Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC); Multimedia (cs.MM); Sound (cs.SD)
Cite as: arXiv:2608.20433 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2608.20433v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.20433
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Vincent K.M. Cheung [view email] [v1] Thu, 20 Aug 2026 03:23:36 UTC (2,419 KB)
Full-text links:
Access Paper:
View a PDF of the paper titled Humanoid Musical Robots as Experimental Interfaces for Music-Evoked Emotion, by Vincent K.M. Cheung and Jia-Yeu Lin
View PDF
HTML (experimental)
TeX Source
view license
Current browse context:
cs.RO
new | recent | 2026-08
Change to browse by:
cs cs.HC cs.MM cs.SD
References & Citations
NASA ADS
Google Scholar
Semantic Scholar
Loading...
Data provided by:
Bibliographic Tools
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data, Media
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Demos
Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Related Papers
Recommenders and Search Tools
Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
Author
Venue
Institution
Topic
About arXivLabs
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)