03 - Music Box
Team Members:
Valentina Valles, Isabela Garza, Wiley Melcher, Ximena Salazar, Esther Mun
Brief Background:
As digital music production grows more accessible, the art of playing physical instruments is becoming less common. Mastering an instrument demands time, coordination, and rhythmic skill. Which are all barriers that deter the musician. To address this, our project aims to automate a traditional instrument to bring music back to its physical roots. We designed a mechanical system to play a xylophone using three hand-like levers, each controlled by a 4-bar linkage and assigned to a specific note, enabling the automated performance of a simple song.
Problem Statement:
The primary challenge for our project is to get the mechanism to play a song on the xylophone equivalent to or exceeding that of a skilled musician. In order to ensure our goal, our mechanism requires precise motion, timed outputs/cycles, and force control.
Summary/Objective:
Our project centers around creating a mechanism that will mimic a music box by playing notes on a xylophone to create a tune. Our idea is to design a system that consists of a 4-bar mechanism in conjunction with a cam-follower system to provide inputs to move the playing arms to tap the xylophone keys. The robot runs as an automated system and will complete a full rotation to play the first 8 notes of Mary Had a Little Lamb. Our objectives deal with mimicking a music box by precisely controlling motion, timing, and force to play the keys at the correct time and with enough force to hear the notes.
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