March 29, 2024

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1991-My Big Brother Engineers Robots and Plays Trumpet-The Robot Shop CMU Robotics Institute

2 min read



The Robot Shop CMU Robotics Institute on National Geographic Explorer

I’ve often talked about my brother Clark McDonald, as The Genius Man. He’s 8 years my elder, has some IQ off the charts, when I was a kid in the 60s, he was making Van De Graaff generators, tearing car engines apart to see how they worked, designing Photo Labs, taking me for rides in his “Get Smart” car at 100 mph, playing 1st chair trumpet in the Carnegie-Mellon Honors band, then joined the elite Air Force Academy Drum & Bugle Corps in Colorado Springs, and when I was age 12, I was able to live there with him for a year. I remember the neighbor was lead alto in the Falconaires. I used to hear him practice all day on sax, clarinet and flute. I think that was where I got the realization, oh, you have to do this for 8 hours. On the way to school, I heard him playing, then on way back from school he was still playing.

I learned a lot about how to practice music from my brother, he plays trumpet, piano, bass and guitar, engineered and recorded music at his home, before it became a “thing”. About singing, pitches, listening, sound, playing common songs etc.

We recently re-discovered this video. He was part of an elite team at Carnegie-Mellon University where the first Robotics Program in the USA had been formed. On this video created for National Geographic, he opens playing classical trumpet, speaks about his role as head Electrical Engineer, and then plays some jazz trumpet later in the video.

It’s an amazing piece of history. 30 years ago, these guys had designed a robot car that drove itself, WAY AHEAD of others who did it later. You can find all the videos at cmurobotics youtube channel…..

“Pittsburgh has been a world capital of artificial intelligence and robotics at least since the 1970s, and the Robotics Institute at CMU has been the academic center of the robot world since its founding in 1979. People from all over the world come here to study, to learn and to make new robots. This segment from the public TV documentary called INVENTED, ENGINEERED & PIONEERED IN PITTSBURGH is a quick taste of some of the very cool technological things that go on in our own backyard. The video story was produced by WQED in cooperation with the Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania. Production made possible by The Buhl Foundation, Michael Baker Corporation, NOVA Chemicals & United States Steel Corporation.”

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