But can it play better than a human, or outperform the human mouth?

"No, its not as good as a human- there are tricky things a human can do with a clarinet that it cant do, yet. We can actually step through three octaves of range, but it's very difficult to jump from a very low note to a high note in one jump, and there are some notes we have trouble jumping to and some that are difficult to play cold."

In the Artemis competition, the robot played Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" and Ravel's "Bolero", both of which avoid large octave jumps or notes that are difficult for the robot to play cold.

Considering the team had all systems working together only three weeks before the competition, the ability of the robot to overcome these weaknesses in the future is likely.

Judge admits that when you close your eyes the clarinet playing robot doesn't yet have the warmth a human player would, but the acoustics laboratory at UNSW is working to improve its authenticity.

He heaped praise on the runners-up to the Artemis competition - a group of robotics enthusiasts from Eindhoven who developed a guitar playing robot that "when you shut your eyes sounded like it was a human playing".

"But most of the coolness in this clarinet is in the mouthpiece, that's why we won the prize."

Judge said that NICTA is looking to return to the competition in subsequent years, and hopes to setup a local competition for tertiary students in their final year of high school or at university to compete for selection of their robotic project as Australia's representative in the ARTEMIS competition. (For more information see here)

NICTA's chief technology officer, Dr Chris Nicol, said that it is conceivable in the near future that we could see an entire orchestra made up of computer driven instruments like the clarinet playing robot.

A short or long video demonstration of the robot is available on the NICTA Web site.