Jason Barnes lost the lower part of his arm in an accident in 2012, seemingly leaving him with two options: give up on being a drummer or take lessons from Rick Allen, Def Leppard's famous one-armed skinsman.

Instead, he took a third option and created his own prosthetic drumming arm.

He eventually combined with Professor Gil Weinberg from the Georgia Institute of Technology's Centre for Music Technology to make a better version.

Not only can Barnes drum, he might actually have an advantage over able-bodied drummers.

His dual-sticked robot drum prosthesis means he can do things that aren't possible with only two arms.

"I see a future where whether it's sports, or music in this sense, where actually the disabled, people who have lost a limb or people who have disabilities, are augmented in a way that lets them actually, maybe run faster, if we're talking about legs, or play more interesting music, is maybe the next step," Professor Weinberg says in a video explaining the device.

"And it will be interesting if, as Jason just mentioned, if some metal drummers that are actually envy of him, envy of a drummer without an arm."

The prosthesis picks up electrical signals from the drummer's upper arm muscles, which it uses to control the sticks with impressive speed and precision.

But Barnes isn't even the most robotic member of the band, which will play in Brisbane on August 23 as part of the Queensland University of Technology's Robotronica event.

That honour goes to the titular Shimon, a marimba-playing jazz robot that can improvise along with human players. It even bobs its head in a way that could be reminiscent of Ray Charles or Thelonious Monk if it wasn't just a silver ball on the end of a metal arm.

Robotronica creative director Jonathan Parsons said the band was at the forefront of performing robots.

"It does open up all kinds of interesting questions about how robots may be incorporated into the performing arts and indeed whether they might even in the future become sort of creative partners," he said.

A panel earlier on the Sunday tackles just that question, can a robot create a painting or poetry with human-like creativity?

According to US comedian Stephen Colbert, if the future includes jazz-playing robots it's not a future he wants to see.

Professor Weinberg will be giving a keynote on August 21.

Shimon Robot is making its Australian debut but it's not the first time robots have played music Down Under. All-robot heavy metal cover band Compressorhead took to the stage at the Big Day Out around the country in 2013.

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