| xylobot


This robot is an autonomous xylophone capable of playing chords of up to 5 notes at a time at speeds of up to 20 notes per second. As one of the oldest and most reliable members of the RobOrchestra, Xylobot currently lives in the robotics club.

Xylobot is connected to a car battery and programmed for demo mode. When activated, the robot plays Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" at a normal speed, then repeats the song at twice the speed.


Each of the 17 keys has a small push-type solenoid mounted just beneath it. When 12 volts of electricity passes through a solenoid, it pops up and strikes the key, then falls back down, all in a fraction of a second.


When the Arduino Duemilanove receives a serial command from its master, it parses the 5-10 character string to determine what note it should play. Then, the note is transmitted in binary across five digital outputs to a demux board. This board uses the binary signals to select one of the seventeen notes, then activates the logical line for that note. The MOSFET board allows each logical line to control the higher voltage solenoids with individual MOSFET circuits.