The shadowy arm of the US Defense Department devoted to funding cutting-edge technology is building an interactive robotics system powerful enough to perform an incredibly difficult task: a trumpet solo. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the US military's technology research arm, has handed over its first cheque to Kelland Thomas, associate director of the University of Arizona School of Information (and a jazz musician in his own right) to fund musical machines. "The goal of our research is to build a computer system and then hook it up to robots that can play instruments, and can play with human musicians in ways that we recognize as improvisational and adaptive," said Thomas. Machine learning is a complex field, and one that a scientist at Darpa's Robotics Challenge in Pomona, California, earlier this year likened to "a three-day-old child". A three-day-old child's brain is incredibly powerful, but it doesn't yet know how to riff like Charlie Parker.

As the band gets into their groove, the guitarist gets ready to rip a solo he's practiced for endless hours. The crowd knows he'll pull it off perfectly. This is the future that researchers, funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), are hoping to produce, according to Tech Insider. A team, lead by Kelland Thomas from the University of Arizona, is trying to teach artificial intelligence software how to jam to jazz music, in the hopes of one day designing robots that can play real instruments and make sweet music. Thomas' team will build up a database of music from jazz legends like Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong. Then it'll force the software through machine learning to go over the music until it knows it inside and out.