Development of a String-shifting Mechanism of a Violin Playing Robot and Feasibility of Music Performance with String-shifting Motion

Abstract

We are aiming to consider the mechanism of human's creation of sound from the viewpoint of control engineering by developing a violin playing robot. In this paper, a string-shifting mechanism of the robot was investigated and made, and the mechanism control system was also examined for achieving a string-shifting motion. We developed a vertical lifting mechanism that has high rigidity and no backlash as a string shifting mechanism for tilting a bowing mechanism. Also, by making the center of rotation of the bowing mechanism the same as the position of the string, the relative height between the string and the bow were made to be kept unchanged after the rotation. In addition, the mechanism control system executed the motion of each mechanism in parallel, thereby we shortened the total string-shifting motion time and were able to play the twinkle stars.