RoboTrombo, the Robotic Trombone Playing Machine
Let's just say that the RoboTrombo won’t be seen at your next local orchestra performance... at least yet.
If you’ve ever witnessed a live orchestra and wondered if the highly-skilled instrument players could one day be replaced by robots, then iSax's RoboTrombo music machine may restore a bit more of your faith in humanity. The build attempts to recreate the skills of a human slide-wind instrument player, using a computer, Arduino Nano, and a variety of pneumatic and electronic actuators. The results are certainly entertaining, but don’t quite attain the goal of precisely reproducing MIDI files on command.
To play, air passes through a resonance chamber, and through simulated lips that are sourced from – according to the walkthrough video – a place “where you shouldn’t look for stuff.” This inputs air into the trombone mouthpiece, which can be tuned via a unique stepper motor and linkage setup.
A trumpet-style valve cuts the blowing air on and off, actuated by a stepper motor. The slide mechanism is also air-actuated, with a pneumatic cylinder and linkage system that moves it in and out. A potentiometer provides for closed-loop slide sensing.
A notebook computer is hooked up to the RoboTrombo for MIDI control, and while in theory it should be able to play an arbitrary song on-command, as of now it’s not reliable enough for this purpose. In fact, the exact same input may sound completely different depending on various conditions. Even so, the build looks like a huge amount of fun, and shows off a few pneumatic concepts that you may not have considered for your next project!