There are robots that will vacuum your house, mow your lawn, and keep their unblinking electronic eyes on you at all times while hovering hundreds of feet in the air. How about a robot that plays a violin? That’s what [Seth Goldstein] built. He calls it a ‘kinetic sculpture’, but there more than enough electronics and mechatronics to keep even the most discerning tinkerer interested.
There are three main parts of [Seth]’s violin-playing kinetic sculpture. The first is a bow carriage that draws the bow across the strings using an electromagnet to press the bow against the strings. The individual strings are fingered with four rubber disks, and a tilting mechanism rotates the violin so the desired string is always underneath the bow and mechanical fingers.
As far as software goes, the Ro-Bow transforms MIDI files into robotic mechanization that make the violin sing. From what we can tell, it’s not quite as good as a human player; only one string at a time can be played. It is, however, great at what it does and is an amazing mechanical sculpture.
Video Below.
I rolled my eyes and recovered my balance after watching the video. A camera is not a water hose at a fire.
Hupfeld and Mills Violino did it better a century ago. The moving fingering is novel. They just did it with many thin fingers.
ro ro ro your bow gently on the string…
Nooooooooo LabVIEW…….. D: The fingers are really cool, though.
Does he really need that many cooling fans everywhere?
+1 on No to LabVIEW
++1 on Nooooooo LabVIEW!
That is impressive.
More impressive, however, is the mechanical version of better capability built over 100 years ago: http://millsnovelty.com/index.php/about-violanos
Interesting. Sounds like crap, but there’s got to be room for improvement. I wonder if it could be adapted to a cello…
This Robot is such a newb. …still needs tapes in first position.
Seriously though, this is awesome engineering.
Even if there is a historical precursor to this, I like the way it looks. Nothing wrong with re-inventing anything. It’s meant to be art after all.