Student ProjectsNU Robotics Club - Robotic Band
Project Manager
Joshua Dominiack, NU Robotics Club
Amount Requested
$5,000
Summary
The Northwestern University Robotics Club (NURC) is an undergraduate student group dedicated to creating a community of students interested in robotics and dedicated to creating and learning together. Across our six subteams, we work on a range of projects, bringing together students across the university. We as club leadership intend to provide developing engineers with all the tools, resources, and guidance necessary to create robots that excite students about complex systems that do things that are fun to watch.
At the start of the year, NURC proposed an initiative which unites robotics with music and the arts. This initiative, the Creative Engineering & Robotic Arts Studio (CERAS), will design, construct, and manage a fully automatic robotic band capable of performing advanced musical pieces in concert-like settings.
Just this year, the initial team has made strides towards the completion of our first robot musician prototype: the drummer robot. As of now, the drummer robot is able to play a full-size five-piece drum set by reading off a MIDI file (a common file type for digitally storing music), allowing for precise velocity and rhythm control of all six drumstick actuators. The current prototype is engineered to execute high-speed and precise maneuvers, including single-hand snare rolls and intricate polyrhythms. Advanced techniques like this (which would often take a human musician years to master) are what we hope to showcase with this and all future robotic systems.
Our team is eager to continue showcasing our work to the Northwestern community, and this grant would significantly advance our project as we work towards creating an entire robotic band made of automatic drummers, keyboard players, guitar players, and more in the future. We believe that this interdisciplinary project will provide undergraduate students with an engaging challenge and offer a connection between seemingly separate disciplines for students with a wide breadth of interests.
Planned Activities/Investments
Project teams that are part of the robotics club are committed to meeting twice a week to work towards project goals and deadlines. The following shows a brief description of our planned activities over the next academic year.
Fall 2024:
This quarter will be a crucial time for CERAS, as it marks the beginning of our initiative’s official recruitment, introducing new minds to our team. Using the current drummer robot prototype, we will recruit and teach new members to contribute effectively. By the time these new members are trained, we will have finished the stationary metal base and all functional aspects of the drummer robot, so new members will work on finishing the more aesthetic portions of the robot like the actuated torso and head of the robot. We will also begin planning our second robot build: the keyboard robot.
Winter 2025:
The focus during winter quarter will be on the team’s automated keyboard player which will use solenoid actuators to quickly operate keys using similar programming as the drummer robot. Having the keyboard and drummer robot together will allow us to work on synchronizing the two systems and begin constructing simple performances. If this work is completed by the end of the quarter we will begin ideation for the last robot of the year.
Spring 2025:
Spring quarter will be spent working on the final system for the year: the automatic guitar player. Ideally with this last system complete, we plan to reach out to student music organizations for collaborations and potential opportunities to showcase the project, as well as exhibiting during engineering week towards the end of the quarter.
Impact
This project will first and foremost impact the members of the robotics club working on this project. As with all of the projects the club offers, we hope to provide club members with exciting projects that they can use to develop as engineers and engage with robotics concepts at a very practical level. Given the cross-disciplinary nature of this project, we hope that it will excite new groups of students who are passionate about music, but may have never considered engaging with robotics previously. We hope that the robotics band project will have a positive impact on this interdisciplinary subset of the Northwestern community by building a bridge between music and engineering on campus that allows students interested in either subject to find and work with like-minded individuals. We also believe that this project has potential to tie our engineering group together with undergraduate music student groups on campus through project collaboration and performances.
Deliverables
By the end of the year we plan on holding an autonomous concert/project showcase where all functional robotic musicians will play songs together as an actual band would. We hope to include this showcase as a part of the annual engineering week festivities near the end of spring quarter. We will also pursue other showcase and performance opportunities towards the end of the year such as the annual Dillo Day festival and other various student-led concerts.
Sustainability
Each year the robotics club works to gather funding from a variety of donors. The club is grateful to have support from several corporate sponsors and university funding sources such as the McCormick Student Advisory Board that help our projects remain sustainable long term. Given this project is a new venture for the club, funding from the Murphy Society would be exceptionally helpful in covering initial costs required to get the project up and running. This funding will also accelerate our ability to put together working prototypes and final versions of these machines that can then be used as marketing material for the club when trying to attract corporate sponsors for future financial support. Having these working demos will also help us attract new membership to the club which is a crucial component in keeping this project and all other projects supported by the robotics club sustainable.
Previous Projects
Last year, our robotic lacrosse goalie project received funding. Prior to receiving the grant, the robot was constructed and could move via remote control. For the past three quarters, a redesign of certain aspects of a mechanical system that moves to catch the lacrosse ball was underwent, among other mechanical projects such as designing camera mounts and components for our motors. Work was also done on the computer vision side of the project—we switched from our previous single-camera setup to a double-camera setup (to detect the incoming ball), and members worked on a detection method with this new setup. While the project is not yet complete, work will continue this upcoming quarter.
Budget Overview
- Steel frame materials: $600
- High-precision actuators (servos / stepper motors etc.): $1,000
- Mass control actuators (solenoid arrays for keyboard robot): $1,000
- Power supplies and drivers: $700
- Digital electronics (Arduino, Raspberry-pi, ESP): $300
- Musical Instruments (drumset, guitars): $1,400
Total Budget Amount: $5,000
Faculty Adviser/Department
Nick Marchuk/Mechanical Engineering