Actuator suggestions for music playing automats/robots

Mar 01, 2007 3 Replies

Hey,



This is a posting for a brain storming session.



If we want to design and build a music playing robot/automat with a group of amateur robot lovers (with limited pocket money) what would you suggest particularly for different types of actuators for different types of musical instruments?



Assume that we want to play * Percussion Instruments (Drum, tabla, etc

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* String Instruments (Violin, etc.
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* Wind Instruments ( Flute, clarinet etc.
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* Guitar
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* Piano



Few issues for the actuators; * Actuators should be quite (not noisy) , * Actuation rate should be high enough for the particular instrument that it will be used for, for playing fast music pieces for that instrument, * Applied force should be adjustable * :( Low cost and can be build by amateurs):


If you know URLs for music playing robots/automats would you share them with us?



Regards,



Miem Chan


PS. If you did not know already, you should visit

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fantastic music playing robot animations.



--FWIW they already exist; they were common around a hundred years ago and you might be able to find out more if you check out groups like AMICA which, IIRC, stands for the American Mechanical musiccal Instrument Collectors Association. There's another group but the name escapes me at the moment.

Steamer,

Thank you for your reply. I've visited the AMICA's web site

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after your reference. That site has very interesting photos but not much detailed info about the actuators. I could not find what is the IIRC.

Following is a list of URLs with some levels of information about the actuators they used in their systems

Robotic Percussionist:

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Thanks,

Miem Chan

--Internet slang for "If I Recall Correctly", heh.

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