The drum robot, a large container filled with mechanics, electronics, pneumatics, 2 industrial robots, and plenty of different drums.
People from the audience control drums and robots, with a large panel of buttons, that each one activates the instruments.
With an internal step sequencer the machine records all hits in a 2 bar loop, and this loop is repeated, and it’s then possible to add or delete beats from the loop.
To give the drums some music to play with, it’s possible to choose 4 different styles of ground-music, jazz, latin, techno or rock.
The idea or the drum robot is made out of several years of robotics work, from the human like beer robot, to advanced industrial robotics.
The supporting idea is interaction with the audience, and simple control of advanced robot technology.
The interaction is quite easy, the audience pres the buttons and the drums are playing. Some people understand quickly the way the machine saves the played music, and they learn to play on the instrument. Other people don’t understand the function, but plays at the drumming machine, and composes the future sound, without knowing how they do it.
Technical information
| Size of the container |
6 meter long, 2.5 meter deep, and 2.5 meter high. |
| Robots |
2pc. Huyndai Ha020, radius 1,986 M, 2 drumsticks in each hand. |
| Drums |
1 Mega drum, Ø 120 cm. – 1 mm. steel used as drumhead.
1 medium drum, Ø 80 cm., Kevlar armed rubber, like drumhead
1 small drum, with 1 pneumatic drumstick.
3 tam drums, with pneumatic drumstick
3 cymbal with pneumatic drumsticks.
3 cow bell with pneumatic drumstick
2 tambourine with pneumatic drumstick
1 mechanical chimes with pneumatic drumstick. |
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| Controll system |
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| Drumsticks |
All drums are pneumatic powered, with 24 volt valves.
Each valve is attached a midi interface, so all drumsticks are controlled like notes in midi. |
| Robots |
The robots are midi controlled.
Each position in the robot’s movements are attached a Midi note, so the movement is made by activating each MIDI node. |
| Control panel |
All buttons in the control panel sends a MIDI node. Note on, when pressed, and note off when released. |
| Music control |
The whole machine is controlled by a MAC computer, with the music programming software MAX –MSP.
A step sequencer with Kvantisering is build. On top of that is a sampler , that plays the different beats.
On a monitor installed inside the machine, is shown an image of the step sequence step, and witch instruments that are present in each step. |
| The transport to the festival |
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The drumming robot at its place at Skanderborg Festival 2008
