Roboartist sketching Heath Ledger’s role as the Joker in The Dark Knight (via Screen cap and HaD)
Have you ever seen a drawing so realistic that it makes you wonder if it was made by man or machine? Well, now you have merit to wonder. Robots have entered into the world of fine arts. Meet Roboartist – the robotic Renoir.
Roboartist is a vector drawing machine that can sketch anything its webcam can capture. Users can feed the prototype images as well, and the robot will map the geometric coordinates of the lines that make up the image, and then take its pencil and get to work on A3 paper, illuminated by an LED backlight.
The artistic image capture was initially powered by the Canny, but now the development team designed its own version called Edgestract, an edge detection algorithm that enables the machine to capture the hard lines of an image and duplicate them using its highly-trained “arm.”
The image comes to life during four stages of fairly impressive sketch work in real artistic fashion. The arm also shakes ever-so-slightly as it creates images, coincidentally making its sketches look as if they were created by its human counterpart.
The image capture software is based on MATLAB, with plans for Open Source coming soon. The device itself is based on Arduino Mega hardware and features four servo motors, a USB input and Bluetooth. Users can feed the devise images via Bluetooth or USB, or it’ll rely on its trusty dusty webcam to draw what it sees by scanning the JPEGs of the live image.
The surface of the drawing board is made from acrylic and it features rows of RGB strips and LED lights, to illuminate the lines on the A3 paper. If nothing else, the violet glow makes Robotartist’s prints look much cooler than what we draw in our basements.
For now the robot is a fun machine that shows the ever-expanding capabilities of robotics. In a trial, the gadget sketched an eerily realistic version of The Dark Knight’s Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger.
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