iPad used to Play Music with Robotic Drums
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So what would you do if you had an iPad, a few dozen servos and 18 Darbuka drums lying around? Make a robotic band of course! We’ve seen several examples of people using their iPads to create music, but this is the first time we’ve seen the iPad used to control real instruments. Jonathan Rubin, Liat Segal and Assaf Talmudi are part of a Tel Aviv based studio that developed the robotic drums for the “Green to Blue” ecological street project.
The trio connected two robotic arms and a high powered LED light to each of the 18 drums used in the show. Instead of using a more traditional solenoid based setup, the team used servos connected to regular drum sticks to achieve both an exciting visual effect and rich sound.
The control the 54 different channels in the show, the team used an XBee radio transceiver connected to a netbook which was controlled by an iPad over WiFi. “As for the use of iPad, we used the touchOSC application for a quick prototyping of our interface, as the entire project was done in about three weeks,” said Liat Segal, part of the Tel Aviv studio. “Choosing the iPad as an interface to a very physical installation proved itself as highly intuitive and fun to use.”
The iPad based setup allowed studio members to “play” the drums in three different modes. They could use the iPad sequencer to compose the beats and then have the system play it back completely autonomously. They were also able to save specific loops as a preset and then play the loops by simply tapping a button on the iPad when in Preset Mode. Lastly, the team could also control each drum manually and jam while on the iPad while in Intuitive Play Mode.
Be sure to check out more video of the iPad controlled robotic drums over on Segal’s blog.
