This little yellow robot does one thing really well. He likes to play drums. What’s funny about the little guy is that he likes to play music on just about any surface other than an actual drum.

The Yellow Drum Machine drives around the room looking for things that might make an interesting sound when tapped on. If he likes what he hears, he starts going to town with a little riff. Once he’s bored, he moves on, looking for something else to make noise with.

As the ‘bot drives around, he avoids obstacles until it detects an object that looks like it might be a nice musical surface, takes some audio samples, and if he finds the sound to be pleasing, composes a little matching rhythm using the original sound sample and plays a little song.

Created by robot hacker fritsl, the little drummer dude is cobbled together from a variety of odd parts, including a PICAXE 28 microcontroller, this sound sampler, a couple of geared motors, an old wood cheese crate and plenty of hot glue.

[Let’s Make Robots via MAKE]