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Waterloo Labs uses paintball guns to make automated works of art

Waterloo Labs is at it again, but instead of concocting eyeball-controls for Italian plumbers, it's futzing with paintball guns. The team has rigged a trio of the paint-filled firearms to make automated art with a little help from a webcam, Labview software, 3D-printed parts and an awful lot of wiring. What winds up on the canvas is pulled from a 50-pixel by 50-pixel image that is fed into the Labview suite. From there, the data moves to the three servo-mounted paintball guns, which precision-fire at their target to replicate the original art. If this description sounds slightly simplified, that's because it is -- the video embedded after the break has the nitty-gritty details. While this setup probably doesn't serve a real-world purpose, it might give your favorite Jackson Pollock wannabe reason to pause.