ZOOZ Mobile Receives $150,000 Innovation Research Grant: May Grow to $1 Million

May 18, 2010 - Atlanta, GA USA · ZOOZ Mobile has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant of $150,000 will support the development of an innovative music intelligence engine for a new line of ZOOZ music creativity apps.

“The NSF SBIR grant validates the quality of our research and the high prospect of commercialization of our efforts,” said ZOOZ Mobile Founder and CTO Dr. Gil Weinberg who is also the Founder and Director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology (GTCMT). “We hope that the first phase of support will lead to great results and to the continuation of the NSF SBIR support, which can grow to mmore than $1 million in funding.”

The SBIR grant will be matched by additional funds from Georgia Research Alliance and Georgia Tech’s Venture Lab, who have supported ZOOZ Mobile in the past. ZOOZ Mobile is one of two spin-off companies that came from GTCMT. Various versions of ZOOZbeat apps have been downloaded more than 1.4 million times from the Apple iTunes App Store.

ZOOZ Mobile has partnered with brands such as Sprite and labels such as Universal Motown to deliver innovative music creativity and remixing apps, including ZOOZbeat Sprite and ZOOZbeat Jackson 5 Remix apps. Our thanks to the NSF and GTCMT where more than 20 faculty members are involved in research and commercialization of innovative music technology.

First Intercontinental Musical Jam Session Between Humans in Japan and Robot in USA

レッツZOOZそれを、ペレス！(Let’s ZOOZ it up, Shimon!)

ZOOZbeat Founder and Chief Technology Officer Dr. Gil Weinberg will jam live from SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 emerging technologies conference in Yokohama, Japan December 16-19, 2009 with Shimon; an autonomous robotic marimba player at Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology that he created. At SIGGRAPH Asia, musicians and non-musicians will also ZOOZin’ it with Shimon.

Robotic Marimba Player Shimon

Shimon is designed to create inspiring human-robot musical interactions that lead to novel musical experiences and outcomes.

“Shimon combines computational modeling of  music perception, interaction, and improvisation with capacity to produce melodic and harmonic acoustic responses through choreographic gestures. Shimon, therefore, listens like a human and improvises like a machine,” says Gil.

For a video clip demonstrating Shimon’s improvisational abilities, Click Here. For Shimon’s new social robotic head demonstration, Click Here.

If you are a ZOOZbeat Musician that lives in Yokohama or will be attending SIGGRAPH Asia 2009, please email: dan@ZOOZmobile.com.

Editor’s Postscript (12/23/09) • Media and Blog Coverage

Robert Siegel of National Public Radio (NPR) All Things Considered Interviews Dr. Gil Weinberg (Transcript)

Shereen Meraji of National Public Radio (NPR) All Tech Considered: Robot Music: Play It Again, Shimon

Patrick Jarenwattananon NPR: A Blog Supreme/NPR Jazz: A Robot That Improvises Like Thelonious Monk

My Amplog Blog by Ed Webb: Play that jazzy music, metal boy

Atlanta Hip-Hop Artist Street Lotto ZOOZin’ with Marimba Playing Shimon (The Robot)

New ZOOZbeat Birth Traced to 10-Year-Old MIT Media Labs PhD Thesis

While November 7, 2009 officially marked the official 1-year anniversary of ZOOZbeat, we trace our beginning back ten years to the MIT Media Labs PhD thesis of ZOOZ Mobile, Inc. (parent company of the new ZOOZbeat and ZOOZbeat Lite) Founder and Chief Technology Officer Dr. Gil Weinberg.

In his thesis, Gil envisioned Beatbugs that would allow you to express yourself musically using gestures or movements with a hand held device; even if you are not musically inclined.

Ten years ago, Beatbugs would have cost $600 to manufacture.

Beatbugs

It was only when Gil saw the first SmartPhone that he realized he could bring his thesis to life as software. A year ago, Gil said: “My research focuses on developing algorithms that would allow musical instruments to analyze and interpret a player’s intentions” as quoted in the Georgia Tech Digital Lounge. Georgia Tech Venture Lab supported the commercialization of ZOOZbeat.

Added Gil: “With [ZOOZbeat], you don’t have to … know a lot of music theory to become musically creative. You can just use your own expressive, intuitive gestures to create music that you can relate.”

Three of Gil’s top graduate students at the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology (which Gil also founded) joined the ZOOZ Mobile (ZOOZbeat) full-time. And, today, you are able to reCreate music with ZOOZbeat ($0.99 until 12/31/09: $2.99 effective 1/1/10) and ZOOZbeat Lite (free) on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

New ZOOZbeat Artists

By January 31, 2009, we anticipate that the new ZOOZbeat will have at least 33 songs or collections (albums) of songs from 15 Artists that you can either buy or redeem promo codes. Plus, we’re in discussions with many indie and major labels to add additional Artists.

Seshiria And Strato999

A shout-out to ZOOZbeat Musicians Cecilia “Seshiria” Diaz and John “strato999” Sheridan for showing us what’s possible with ZOOZbeat. Cecilia’s provided ZOOZbeat Musician with tips in the first issue of ZOOZbeat Update. John provides tip in the next edition of the ZOOZbeat Update. [John was interviewed about ZOOZbeat by CNN.com in October.]

And this …

Stay tuned for lots of exciting news in the months and years ahead as we mash up music, mobile and motion to create a new and unique interactive music experience for you using ZOOZbeat: your Music reCreation Studio.

If you have ZOOZbeat Lite, please consider upgrading to the new ZOOZbeat for an extended music reCreation experience. We have extended the introductory price of $0.99 through 12/31/09 because thousands and thousands purchased the new ZOOZbeat app when it was official re-launched on October 14th. ($2.99 effective 1/1/10).

Happy Thanksgiving from the ZOOZbeat team.