AI Plays Guitar Hero in Real-Time
What you’ll learn:
- How to make AI play Guitar Hero.
- How LabVIEW and CompactRIO can be used for industrial automation.
- How to have fun with AI and software.
Many years ago, I worked on Burroughs B6700s and IBM 360s that had massive light panels with hundreds of switches tied to the CPU registers, enabling real-time debugging by programmers who had most of the hex or octal opcodes memorized. The lights were typically flashing randomly based on the programs being run, but you know engineers: “They love to change things.”
Well Jim... I hear Chapel's an M.D. now. Well, I'm gonna need a top nurse... not a doctor who'll argue every little diagnosis with me. And they probably redesigned the whole sickbay, too! I know engineers, they LOVE to change things.
- DeForestKelley as Doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy in Star Trek: The Motion Picture | YouTube
That’s sort of what Cyth Systems did with the game Guitar Hero (Fig. 1) as explained by Quentin Smith, Principal Marketing Engineer. The magic was done using a camera. Emerson’s NI CompactRIO runs a LabVIEW program that takes a video stream from a camera, runs it through an artificial-intelligence/machine-learning (AI/ML) model to identify what’s going on the screen where the game Guitar Hero is running, and then controls the servos the play the game using the game’s guitar controller.
Cyth Systems isn’t just doing robot game-playing tasks; the company is also involved in supporting industrial automation. Their engineers also lead training sessions as well as work with companies developing products. They also sell test and measurement products like NI’s USRP B-Series (USB) of software-defined-radio (SDR) hardware platforms. And they also have their own Circaflex prototyping and deployment platform (Fig. 2).
Cyth Systems engineering services include extensive NI and LabVIEW projects, so playing Guitar Hero was a relatively simple exploit. The mechanical servos on the guitar controller aren’t something you want on a production line, but it could be possible for the software.
About the Author
William G. Wong
Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF
I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.
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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.
I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.
Quentin Smith
Principal Marketing Engineer, Cyth Systems
Quentin Smith is a technical product manager and engineer with associated professional experience in product strategy, product marketing, sales, and systems engineering. He is interested in helping build solutions for the industrial transition to green energy, climate impact monitoring, and environmental sustainability.