Robotic Slide Whistle

During my freshman year at Drexel University, I was part of the ExCITe Center engineering learning community (ELC) which meant that in addition to taking classes with other students from the ELC we were all in special freshman engineering design sections. My favorite section of that year was the robotic instruments section where each team was tasked with designing a robotic instrument. I took the lead and since many other teams were making percussion and string instruments we thought a wind instrument would be a breath of fresh air. This robot was controlled with an Arduino Teensy and was MIDI compatible which was one of the project requirements so that it could be played together with all of the other instruments in an orchestra.