Meet Ro-Bow, purportedly a "mechatronic" sculpture. That’s what Seth Goldstein built. He calls it a ‘kinetic sculpture’, but there more than enough electronics and mechatronics to keep even the most discerning tinkerer interested.
There are three main parts of Seth’s violin-playing kinetic sculpture. The first is a bow carriage that draws the bow across the strings using an electromagnet to press the bow against the strings. The individual strings are fingered with four rubber disks, and a tilting mechanism rotates the violin so the desired string is always underneath the bow and mechanical fingers.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by WizardFusion on Monday March 02 2015, @04:11PM
Over 100 years ago - http://millsnovelty.com/index.php/about-violanos [millsnovelty.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @10:02PM
Very cool, thanks for the link!
... The violin produced a full tone and was able to sound 1/2 note double stops at ragtime tempo. The staccato coil allowed the bows to leave the string a fraction of a second before the 'fingers'. The violin stayed in tune by a sophisticated array of tuning arms and weights. The vibrato was produced by using an electromagnet to shake the tail-piece of the violin. ...
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday March 02 2015, @10:35PM
I didn't watch the video as I'm at work, but if the robot makes music using the violin, then why is "Plays" in quotes?
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Wednesday March 04 2015, @10:37AM
Because the robot doesn't play the violin in the typical sense. It's programmed to perform specific movements of it's motors in order to produce a sound.