Technology Lab / Information Technology

Drone rock: Robotics company creates a flying, musical band

Robot sextet plays tempo-perfect classics, will perform live in DC this weekend.

Carol of the Bells is nothing without the bells. KMel Robotics' demonstration proves that the song needs a fleet of flying robots tapping a bunch of bell-connected paper cups, as well!

Up until this point, the musical genre known as "drone rock" had been a weird, indie niche that consisted of slow, loud guitar noise. If machinists and programmers have their way, that description will need some major rewriting—but it'll probably seem just as weird.

This week, a team at Philadelphia-based KMel Robotics, known for building airborne video recording solutions, turned their robot-making talents to creating a band. The company pre-programmed a six-aircraft ensemble to hover over instruments and strum or strike without any human interaction, other than the team's initial strike of a "play" button.

"We're sending commands to the vehicles at 100 times per second," KMel co-founder Daniel Mellinger told the BBC in a video interview. "The timing is very precise. To get to the base level where we can attempt something like that took several years." That helped KMel's robots pull off tempo-perfect renditions of the Strauss-composed theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey (fitting, right?) and "Carol of the Bells," along with a trippy, slowed-down take on "The Star Spangled Banner."

With the exception of synthesizers, the band's instruments are largely analog. The most digital part of the performance comes from wireless triggers, telling the drones to land on, then take off from, giant plastic pads that connect to everything from full drum sets to bells to a custom-built, single-string guitar (whose pitch changes thanks to a robotically controlled carriage).

At least in this demonstration, the band doesn't reach the high-tempo insanity of humanoid robot bands like Compressorhead. Rather, the use of plastic pads recalls Nintendo's old Robotic Operating Buddy (R.O.B.), who awkwardly tapped at colorful buttons to help in games like Gyromite and Stack-Up.

KMel's robots will play their first live performance at this weekend's USA Science and Engineering Festival, where they'll join presenters and panelists like Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe, The Wonder Years' Danica McKellar, and nerd-rockers They Might Be Giants. If sharing the stage with such celebrities goes to the robots' heads, then we'll start anticipating the second part of this band's inevitable Behind The Music special, complete with binge propeller-lubricant consumption and all-night, Roomba-groupie orgies.

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