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WF-4R lille2004

1. Introduction
2. Mechanism
3. Musical Performance System
4. Musical Performance Movie
5. Acknowledgment
Musical Performance Activities
Papers

 Since 1990, the research of the anthropomorphic flutist robot at Waseda University has focused on reproducing human organs (lips, lungs, neck, arms, fingers, tonguing, and vibrato) which are required for flute playing. The main goal of this research is to clarify the flute playing mechanism from engineering viewpoint and to enable the communication with humans at emotional level.
wfseries
WF-1 WF-2 WF-3RIV WF-3RIX WF-4
   wf1
   (1990)		 wf2
  (1992)		 wf3RIV
   (1998)		 wf3RIX
   (2002)		 wf4
   (2003)
 (more details)   (more details)
bar02


 In 2004, we developed the anthropomorphic flutist robot WF-4R(Waseda Flutist No.4 Refined) with 38-DOFs.

*Click each part of WF-4R to jump to the details.






 This mechanism has 5-DOFs to accurately control the air beam direction. The upper lip has 3-DOFs and the lower lip has 2-DOFs. Therefore, it is possible to control the width and thickness of the air beam by controlling the movement of each lip.
 The lung system has two piston cylinders. The total capacity of the lungs is 8.12*10-1[m3] which is almost equal to a male adult.
                                                                                                                         








 The neck system was designed to increase the motion range and attitude control of the lips. A harmonic drive gear has been used to achieve high accuracy positioning.
 The vibrato mechanism is composed by a voice coil motor to reduce the size and weight of this unit, which it has been installed on the rear of the neck.
                                                                                                                         






 The arm system has 7-DOFs: the upper arm has 4-DOFs and the forearm has 3-DOFs.
 The upper arm system was designed to increase the motion range of the flute positioning. A harmonic drive gear has been used to achieve a high accuracy positioning.
 The parallel mechanism has the advantage of having high positioning accuracy and high mechanical stiffness. We have adopted a 2-DOF parallel mechanism for the forearm.
 The wrist pitch axis is obtained by moving two links on the same direction, and the wrist roll axis is done by moving two links on the opposite direction.
                                                                                                                                                  






 Each finger consists of a link mechanism actuated by DC servomotors with pulley and wire. All fingers can open and close the flute key in 8[Hz].
 MIDI Tone Generator Module performs accompaniment from speaker system. The details of Musical Performance System are here.
                                                                                                                         





 The MIDI accompaniment system of WF-4R consists of two computers to control the robotfs musical performance: one for controlling the robot and the other one to generate the accompaniment MIDI data. Both computers are connected by the MIDI system, and the synchronization of the performance is achieved by using the timing clock from the MIDI signal.


The Flight of The Bumble Bee
(mpeg/1:40[min]/16.6MB)
 WF-4R plays "The Flight of The Bumble Bee" composed by N.A.Rimsky-Korsakov.




 A part of this research was conducted at the Humanoid Robotics Institute (HRI), Waseda University, and part of this was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for the WABOT-HOUSE Project by Gifu Prefecture.

Humanoid Robotics Institute, Waseda University
WASEDA UNIVERSITY WABOT-HOUSE LABORATORY
Last Update 2004.11.4
Copyright (c) 2004-2005 Team FLUTE / Takanishi Laboratory
All rights reserved.