This Robot Toots Its Own Flute

Atsuo Takanishi's quest to build a robotic orchestra started with a robotic flutist. Someday this robo-musician might jam with a human jazz band.
Robot researcher Atsuo Takanishi, a professor of engineering at Waseda University, in Tokyo, is driven by a vision that would probably appall many musicians. Takanishi wants to create a humanoid robot orchestra. So far he and his group of researchers have developed a pretty good flute-playing robot and have begun work on a saxophone player. Though he has spent many years perfecting the flutist, Takanishi expects things will move much faster now, because he tackled one of the hardest instruments to play first.