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.
The 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.
Beelzabuggy!
June 1, 2009
The Beelzabuggy was my first Web robot back in 1999. I’m not sure it’s relevant here. But you never forget your first. 
It has a camera and microphone and was controlled by a Web server. So visitors to the site could drive it around and explore Nervebox Studio from a cat’s-eye view.
It was my first project with Java, threads, sockets, serial ports, and microcontroller programming. And it handed me my own butt every day until it was finally done.
I eventually retired the little guy because of short battery life, privacy concerns, and just getting caught up in other projects. I might be willing to give him somebody who wanted to give him some geeky lovin’ and let him run free again.
The Blo-bot
May 31, 2009
What has 6 legs, 4 elbows, no head, and hoots as winsomely as a lovestruck pygmy?
The Blo-bot is my first robot for Ensemble Robot. It’s a tetrahedron of pneumatic cylinders and modified organ pipes that makes music as it slithers and flexes among it’s 64 (2^6) possible shapes.
Here’s a short interview we did for NPR before its first show:
It was featured in shows at MassMoCA, the Wired NextFest, and the Boston Museum of Science. I’m honestly not certain where it is anymore. If you see it out there, please send it home.
This is what is looks like in motion!
Falling off the Robot Wagon
May 31, 2009
I said I wouldn’t do it. But I couldn’t stay away. The hours, the expense, the stress of watching level-0 prototypes in high-profile performances, holding my breath waiting for them to embarrassingly malfunction onstage.
But I miss the people. So I’ve re-joined Ensemble Robot!
This summer I’m building a control system for musical robot for musical robots. My group at the MIT Media Lab needs it. By sharing it with Ensemble Robot, I can field-test it for the Media Lab folks.
And I must confess, I miss the bots too.
