Little Drummer Bot: Building, Testing, and InterfacingWith a New Expressive Mechatronic Drum System

Abstract

While a large number of mechatronic and robotic musical instruments feature actuated drum strikers, the majority of these percussion instruments are mechanically and electronically quite simple.This article presents Nudge, a new mechatronic drum beater with more degrees of freedom than is typical of most robotic percussion instruments.Nudge can rotate to a variety of positions above one or more percussive objects with the use of a closed-loop servomotor.Additionally, the height from which the drumstick hits the drum can be adjusted on the fly.Though designed to be inexpensive and easy to build, Nudge is intended to afford composers, installation artists, and other users more compositional flexibility than with many previous mechatronic drum systems.A systems overview, evaluation, and discussion of usage applications are presented along with a short history of related work in robotic percussion systems.