Robotic Musician
Expressive Robotic Guitar
An acoustic guitar-playing robot that mimics huuman motion to play expressive
Mi Blocks on system
Interactive Music System
MI Blocks
A LEGO compatible interactive system for kids to learn sensor mapings and music
MI Bocks, or Music Interactive Blocks, are a LEGO-inspired/compatible electronic music interface that utilizes a limited musical vocabulary to scaffold novices in early compositional decision-making for electronic music making.
Design Philosophy
The paradigm of “Active Learning” for music education often prioritizes self-exploration and learning through experience before introducing any theory. The Orff instrumental set, first developed in 1928, is a set of simple, toy-like percussion instruments, little drums, tambourines, xylophones, and glockenspiels, designed to invite and encourage children to play music together in simplified settings within a classroom. They are among the most widely used tools in early musical education. The success of the Orff instrument set can be attributed to its simple and intuitive designs that resonated with children.
“Children learn through play and adults play through art.”
Currently, there is a growing motivation to develop digital early music education tools that combine the toy-like design language of Orff instruments with the open-ended potential for musical exploration and engagement afforded by electronic music practices. This project uses the familiarity and modularity of LEGO for interactive musical systems; users can place Music Interactive (MI) Blocks on a board. When a block is placed on a board, any sensor data on the block immediately starts streaming. These values are filtered and start premapped to a musical feature, but can be modified for the users need
System design
The overall system design for the Modular LEGO musical interface parallels LEGO Mindstorm robotics invention system. Our system includes a microcontroller core that handles the logic and processes streams of data from sensor modules that are physically compatible with standard LEGO building elements.
This project was in a collaboration with Noel Alban, with an original prototype featuring only legos connected to a microcontroller. We wanted to redesign the system with a more user friendly interface. In the original system, every sensor hooked up had to be manually plugged into an arduino board (which also resulted in a mess of cables). Additionally, the software was cpp based which is not as visual for kids to play with. The new system uses magnets to snap miblocks in place, and embeds a microcontroller on each block. This allows us to wirelessly stream the data to any host.
We received a seed grant of $2,000 for this project and debuted it in a concert in May 2026. Afterwards, people were able to interact with the system and play with it
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MedusAI
Recently built interactive exhibit using strings, drums, and robotic arms to create a robotic musician that uses vision and audio input to modify lights, robot movemnents, and string playing.