Robotic drawing

While plotters are fun and easy to use, I also have a strong interest in working with humanoid/articulated robots. In 2016 I visited the Idiap research institute in Switzerland for 6 months, where I worked with Sylvain Calinon on graffiti-drawing applications of a Baxter research robot. This robot is widely used in research because it is compliant, that is it can be programmed to adjust its limbs to external perturations and forces, and it is suitable for human-robot interaction applications.

At the same time, getting the robot to draw smooth trajectories with a marked proved to be rather challenging. During my visit, we developed a solution that we published at the iROS 2016 conference in Daejeon, Korea. More info and a video can be found on my research website.

Light painting

During the same period, we also experimented with producing light paintings, replacing the pen with a LED and tracing contours generated for, of course, a teapot.

Creating a long exposure shot gives