Posts Tagged mechanical engineering
The Robot that Played the Violin
Posted by Veronica Richter in School of Engineering, Students, Technology, Video on December 21, 2012
For Professor Rogers’ Introductory Robotics and Mechatronics (ME 84) class, students were required to design a robot to play a musical instrument.
Upon hearing their assignment, Emmanuel Runes, E13, Alexander Metzger, E13, Brad Nakanishi, E13, Bronson Wongkew, E14, and Nate Goldsberry, E13, decided to challenge themselves and take on the violin. Why is the violin a challenge, you ask? “Basically, the difficulty is not only being able to hit the various strings for pitch difference, which by itself can be a difficult problem, but the hardest issue is the bowing motion: you need to apply the correct amount of force and correct amount of speed for bowing because too slow or fast causes squeaking from the violin and negatively affects the sound,” explains Metzeger.
After more than 130 hours working on the project, the group debuted their masterpiece at a special Robot Concer in Distler Performance Hall on December 6. Check out the fruits of their labor in the video below!
Engineers Make Music
Posted by Carly Machlis in Faculty, School of Engineering, Student Experience, Students, Technology, Video on October 19, 2012
Students in Professor Chris Rogers’ Introduction to Robotics class are having some fun in the classroom! Rogers, who works at the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO), is working with students to make musical instruments out of LEGO NXT equipment. This is LEGO engineering technology at its finest and it produces some impressive digital music, too!
Watch the video below, and learn more about LEGO NXT technology here: