P.E.A.R.T. - The Robotic Drum Machine

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Welcome

Welcome to the site of P.E.A.R.T. which stands for Pneumatic and Electronic Actuated RoboT.  P.E.A.R.T. is a robot that is made to be set up in front of any drum set and play the drums with any MIDI file as the input.  It is capable of running 16 separate drum channels, with each drum capable of being hit up to 19 times per second (which sounds pretty awesome on a bass drum by the way).

P.E.A.R.T. was a senior design project at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.  The group members for the project are Frankie Graffagnino, Michael DeRouen, Jeremy Moreau, and Jackie Robertson.

Please enjoy the site.  If you are tech-savvy, you will want to check out the How It Works page.  Make sure you take a look at some of the videos of P.E.A.R.T. in action and also check out some construction pictures.  Questions and comments are welcome.

The group members would like to thank Scott's Drum Center for lending us stuff for the project. We would also like to thank Moreau's Welding Service for donating materials and labor to help us build the mechanical levers used in the device. Thanks guys!

Update: I feel compelled to clarify a misconception: the goal of this project is not to replace human drummers!! The goal of this project is to take a MIDI file and make it sound like real drums. Please view it in that context. We do not see this as competition to human drummers... simply another way of presenting percussion. --FG

Update: Many questions have appeared in the guestbook and also in my inbox, so I thought I would try to answer a few here.

1. What is P.E.A.R.T. up to these days?
   Right now, P.E.A.R.T. is in pieces in my closet. Since he was built, the loaner drumset and air-compressor were all returned.
   
   
2. Do you have any future plans for P.E.A.R.T.?
   Absolutely. I am still trying to recover from a few expenses, but as soon as I get the funds, I will be working on it a good bit. First step is to get a drumset and an air-compressor. After the upgrades, I would love to build a few of them and perform a sort of robotic percussion concert.
   
   
3. Is P.E.A.R.T. for sale? If so, how much?
   Well, P.E.A.R.T. is not really for sale, but I would gladly build you one for about $4000 USD if you really wanted one.
   
   
4. Is any of the velocity/volume information in the MIDI files used by P.E.A.R.T.?
   Not at the moment, but that is one of the planned upgrades. Not having any real-time volume control makes some songs sound really odd (as we found out when we tried to play the opening of "Radar Love").
   
   
5. What do you use to generate the MIDI files?
   Google.
   
   
6. Could you have it play X and put it on the website?
   As soon as I get it back up and running, I would love to entertain various requests.
   

As soon as I get P.E.A.R.T. up and running again, I'll post some more updates here. --FG

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