Musical Robots and original Instruments
Introducing robots that play musical instruments. Five humanoid robots form a band which play nursery rhymes.
The height of the three robots is 80 cm. The heights of other two robots are 60cm and 40cm. Every robot has more than 22 servomotors as joints.
Although they are sitting on a chair, they can stand. Four of them play electronic drums, two metallophones, and a set of bells. (The unique drum set is made of acrylic.) One of them is a singer with voice synthesis. In dark places, the LED of each robot glows beautifully.
The robots are my original productions. They look similar but different from each other and there is only one in the world. I made their frames with CNC and 3D printer. The servo motors and a controller are by Japanese maker KONDO-KAGAKU corp. I also developed a dedicated software which synchronizes the robots.
The acrylic electronic drums played by a robot are also original production. Hi hat, cymbal, snare drum and bass drum are beautifully designed. Every drum sends signal to the sound generator when it is hit. (The sound generator is a commercial product by KORG. It takes trigger from audio cable and generates drum sounds.)
All robots are connected to one laptop computer. A standard MIDI file is loaded into the dedicated software. A standard MIDI file can be made by normal musical sequence software. One of the MIDI channels is assigned to each robot. For example, data of channel 1 is sent to robot A, and data of channel 2 is sent to robot B. When data is played back, commands for controlling the servomotors from dedicated software are sent to each robot through a serial cable. The audio signals of the song are also sent to a voice synthesis device. (The voice synthesis is a commercial product by KORG. It generates VOCALOID Hatune-Miku voice.) For the singer robot, commands to take the pose are sent instead of voice data.
The robots play the original musical instruments, such as electric drums and acrylic percussion instruments.
Robots sometimes perform ensemble with humans.