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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.
Robotic arm bends to the will of the Wiimote
While we've seen a nunchuk control a robotic camera and the U.S. government's experimental Packbot, we've yet to see anything as sophisticated as this. With the video being past the post break (sorry, but it autoplays and we can't be having that on the main page), we'll save the narrative introduction of describing what this thing is and why it does what it does so well. Just know this: it's pretty awesome.Cruise past the post break and check out this Wiimote-controlled robotic arm and see for yourself.
