The Whirly-Bot
June 6, 2009
The Whirly-Bot is my favorite of Ensemble Robots’ musical bots. It’s 10 feet tall, 8 feet wide, and shakes like a turbine engine trying to lift off. It’s been said to sound like a chorus of angry angels or “kinda like sniffing a whole fistful of magic markers”.
It uses 7 layers of spinning corrugated plastic tubes to create a fully chromatic range of notes. Well, sort of. The 7 fundamental tones are tuned in 12-tone equal temperament. All other tones are created by spinning the tubes faster to create overtones. So all other tones are in the overtone series. It sounds quite unlike anything else.
doneThe concept and design are mine. Its motor control system was designed and built by William Tremblay and its tubes were created, tuned and tweaked by Erik Nugent.
It was assembled in a raging week of all-nighters. Additional help came from Alicia Volpicelli, Peter Ford, and Emily Levin. It debuted at the Wired Magazine NextFest in NYC in 2006.
