By Mayank Govilla, Toby Wilensky, and Douglas Moore

For Musical Machines B term 2022

The wine glass robot our team designed is a continuation project from the glass tango musical robot that was built in 2020. It uses a DC motor to spin a block of rosin around the rim of a wine glass, causing the glass to resonate.

Our team’s goal was to produce an instrument that could pitch bend between different notes by changing the water level inside (or outside) of the glass. Adding water dampens the vibration and lowers the pitch that is generated when the glass resonates.

We first began working on ways to resonate the glass. The glass tango robot used sponges connected to small servos in order to resonate the glasses as they spun, but the robot wasn’t 100% consistent. Our team tried sponges, rubber gasket material, pool noodle foam, and insulation foam, but we ultimately found that rosin was the best choice. The material made the glass ring out very loud, and also with good consistency.

Although our resonator worked incredibly well, we didn’t foresee how slow our pitch changing module would actuate. The pitch bending is accomplished with an 8″ linear motor that actuates a 0.5L syringe. The syringe dumps or uptakes water from the acrylic basin in order to change the water level on the glass.

Unfortunately, the speed at which the water level changes is incredibly slow. Our team didn’t find a way to fix the issue before the term ended, so we had to use a virtual instrument in our final composition.