Nearly everyone will be wearing a tartan, so the Carnegie Mellon University plaid will fit right in. But people will likely notice McBlare before they check out his attire. He'll be the one standing on his own three legs. And plugged into the wall.
McBlare is a robotic bagpiper, first developed in 2004 by Roger Dannenberg and students at Carnegie Mellon. He would have unfair advantages in a competition, drawing his air supply from a compressor and possessing electrifyingly quick fingers.
"At first he was a joke, to contrast with more serious demonstrations for celebrating 25 years of robotic research here," Dannenberg says.
When students Ben Brown, who handled mechanical design, and Garth Zeglin, who put together the electrical elements, moved on to other work, Dannenberg kept improving McBlare.
"The thing that amazes me about pipers is that they have to create 1 pound of air pressure per square inch, which is a lot more than normal trumpet playing requires," says Dannenberg, who is a trumpeter himself.
Pipers create the air pressure by blowing into the instrument's bag, which has openings to the pipes. The air flow sets the reeds inside the pipes vibrating, which produces the sound.
"Pipers get a real workout when they play," he says.
In addition to drone pipes, which keep playing the same tones, bagpipes have a chanter pipe that produces the melodic notes of songs and dances.
"The mounting of the robotic fingers to play the chanter was the trickiest element of the design," Dannenberg says.
McBlare's graphite fingers are controlled by electromagnets that are fired by a microcontroller using a normal midi interface with the main computer. But because the electromagnets are small to be light and fast but produce little pressure, the placement of the robotic fingers' rubber tips for covering the sound holes must be absolutely precise.
Dannenberg wrote the computer program that makes McBlare musical. An associate research professor of computer science and art, the Squirrel Hill resident is also a composer. His seven pieces called "Resound" helped usher in the new era of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble five years ago by using a computer to create music in counterpoint with a live trumpeter.
Dannenberg's sound processing program was also part of composer Leonardo Balada's Symphony No. 5 that received its world premiere in the fall of 2003 by the Pittsburgh Symphony.
McBlare is set to play two pieces at an exhibition in Scotland -- the traditional "Highland Laddy" and a piece Dannenberg just completed, tentatively titled "Glasgow."
Although McBlare will be disassembled and travel with the luggage to Europe, Dannenberg is confident his new piece will be performed exactly as he intended. And that's more than most composers can say.
