Project 1: Part Two

For us to show the difference of the robots interpretation of art and humans we decided on having two images created at once. One would be the image of how the robot sees the world and the other as how humans do. These two images then will be able to be compared against each other in a way that will let people see not just art but also the robots interpretation of art.

Putting the robot inside a box would help us deliver in creating two images at once. We decided on having the image of the robots input of data on the roof of the box using a vivid to trace its path and then have the artistic output on the ground using paint. The box would have to be a size that was big enough to fit the papers of art as well as have room for the robot to turn when reaching the sides. It also had to be exact height of the robot with the vivid attached.   

We found that the best and most responsive way for our robot to function with human interaction was by sound. This was because of it being isolated visually from us and would be inefficient for us to use a visual interaction while keeping the robot and the art hidden. The response to the robot hearing a sound above a certain volume will be by deploying a paint covered sponge attached to the robot, downwards. This will cause it to make a splatter effect with the paint.

We originally were going to have just the sponge make the art by itself but because we thought the paint on the sponge would run out to fast, we wanted to give it some sort of method of either keeping the sponge wet or to disperse more colours beside the sponge. This took up a lot of time but eventually we came up with using medical supplies to hold and slowly dispense paint while being attached to the robot. This meant we could include two extra colours into the art as well as the sponge. I found this idea to be the unique feature for our robot that gave it character as an artist using its tools to create.     

Prototype version of robot

For the movement we wanted it to be random with no way of knowing which direction it could be going. We introduced another sensor to determine how close it was to the edges, this was the ultrasonic sensor. Once it got to a certain distance away from the walls it would randomly turn. This was to give it more of an art like look and become unpredictable in how it was created.