Let’s Make Robots! has posted some videos of a cool robot called the Yellow Drum Machine, a Picaxe driven robot that moves around looking for objects to beat on. Whatever is beats on gets recorded and is played again.

Yellow Drum Machine

Developer fritsl writes:

I was sitting thinking what I should do for my next robot, what it should do.. Listening to music.. making a rythm with some robot-parts.. Thought; “Hey, I will make a robot that drives around and plays on stuff”

The Yellow Drum Machine will

  • Navigate around, collect some data, avoid obstacles, until it
  • Finds something “worth playing on” (a single isolated object or a wide flat surface that it can find an angle onto)
  • Snakes into place
  • Plays some beats on what it have found, and samples this, checking it has a “good sound”
  • Based on data collected in the area, and sample just made, then compose a little rhythm, and plays this along with the sample.

Watch the videos on the Yellow Drum Machine page to get a better idea of what this all looks like.

Link via Make:Blog