Blending Physical and Digital Worlds: CWI Develops a PhysioDrum
Publication date: 2025-11-21
How can physical objects be enhanced by digital features to create new experiences in areas like cultural heritage and the performing arts? In his PhD thesis Rômulo Vieira provides a theoretical framework and a new smart instrument to explore this question.
The PhD thesis was co-supervised by Débora Christina Muchaluat Saade (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil) and Pablo Cesar (DIS Group). In his thesis “Internet of Multisensory, Multimedia, and Musical Things: (Io3MT) Environments: Requirements, Use Cases, and Evaluation”, Rômulo Vieira explores a new theoretical framework that aims at defining and understanding the blending of the physical and digital world in the musical
In addition to this theoretical framework, Rômulo developed a number of representative examples (smart instruments), and empirically validated them based on experiments with professional and amateur musicians. Rômulo even designed and developed a new smart instrument: a drumkit, which includes smart drumsticks and a foot pedal. It incorporates haptic feedback, and is seamless connected to the virtual world and other instruments. The PhysioDrum allows for novel artistic forms and connected performances with other artists. It can be used for personalised training, remote teaching or novel artistic creations and visualisations. Watch a video demonstration of PhysioDrum here.
More Information about the PhD defense
- PhD Student: Rômulo Vieira
- Title: “Internet of Multisensory, Multimedia, and Musical Things: (Io3MT) Environments: Requirements, Use Cases, and Evaluation”
- Promotors: Prof. Dr. Débora Christina Muchaluat-Saade (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil) and Prof. Dr. Pablo Cesar (CWI and TU Delft, Netherlands)
- Time: Tuesday 25th 2025, 12:00CET
- Location: Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), Niterói, Brazil
- GoogleMeet Link: https://meet.google.com/rfu-dazx-obc
The Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group is exploring the impact of digital technologies in the creative and cultural sector, developing and evaluating ground-breaking tools powered by Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality. Together with professionals from the sector, the group researches and develops novel workflows, ecosystems and tools that blend the physical and digital worlds, creating an environment for novel artistic forms: new instruments like in this thesis, museum exhibitions based on social XR concepts, awarded winning Operas, and distributed theatre performances. The work of the group has been financially supported by the European Union through projects like AMPLIFY, TRANSMIXR and TRACTION.
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