Honda's ASIMO may have picked up the baton to conduct an entire orchestra, but Toyota has just outperformed the little guy with its suite of robo-musicians. Dubbed Chuck, Harry, Dave and Ritchie (honestly!) the part-wheeled, part-bipedal quartet recently performed a concert where they actually played a trumpet, tuba, drums, violin and trombone. Their song repertoire included a Glenn Miller piece and a popular Japanese tune— and that makes waving a baton around seem pretty low-tech. Wait 'til you see the video of Ritchie hammering away on his custom drum kit— he'll have you giggling with robot-appreciation glee.

It's pretty hard to worry about the future rise of the robot empire when they're acting quite this cute isn't it? That said, it's not hard to spot where the scientific value of these robots lies: all that dexterity in manipulating the instruments may one day end up in consumer robot products. [Robot watch via New Launches]

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