An overview of MechBass: A four string robotic bass guitar

Abstract

Traditional robotic guitar-like stringed instruments have lacked sufficient degrees of freedom and responsivity required to emulate even an average human guitar player. We seek to address this in the design and construction of a modular four-string robotic bass guitar, MechBass. This paper describes the various components of each module and the system-level operation of MechBass. The result is an instrument that can outperform (in terms of capability and consistency) even a highly skilled human guitar player.