The RobOrchestra team designs and builds musical robots. These might be a novel invention or replicate an existing instrument. Music is generated for each robot in real time, based on a chord progression algorithm using Markov graphs.

My work in the past has been on the flutophone, which started as a simple penny whistle. I've passed the project on to a younger generation, but my design will remain intact. You can see a video demonstration of the robotic flutophone here.

This year I am working on re-vamping the snare drumming robot, or SnareBot. The goal is to build a small portable drumming robot capable of accomplishing most rudimentary skills. The partner to this 'bot is the bass drum robot.

SIGMO is an ongoing project since 2005 -- to create an efficient humanoid robot. I've redefined the project goals over time, but basically I want something that can walk and talk like a person. I've done a lot of the work on talking and communicating with some success, and am in a redesign phase of the entire locomotion system.

I used to run www.sigmorobot.com, but let the domain run out a while back so I could focus on starting DanShope.com. The content that was on the old domain will be transferred to a holy place at my new site.

This project was really fun -- designed and constructed in under 2 days for a robotics demonstration at a Cub Scout meeting. The kids (1st to 5th) graders really enjoyed playing with the arm and seemed to grasp the control interface pretty quickly. It's your basic robot arm -- round base (doesn't spin yet) with a large "shoulder" joint, elbow, and wrist flexion and rotation. The robotic gripper mechanism needs redesigned as the actuator cam jams in between the fingers.

I had to disassemble and reassemble parts of the robot while I was showing it to the kids, which sounds bad -- but by the end several were helping me put things back together! This was a realistic example of engineering -- things DO break, and you need to expect it and know how to fix or (or know how to get someone else to fix it).

I can't tell you too much about this one since it's for an engineering competition, but I am working with a great team of students from Carnegie Mellon to construct a small but capable "Mars Rover" for the 2009 American Society of Mechanical Engineers Student Professional Development Conference coming up this spring. The competiton is an annual affair but the design challenge changes each year. You can find out more information at www.asme.org. We'll be competing in Dayton, OH sometime in late April.

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