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Palm OS Powered Tattooing Robot Debuts in Vienna
Makarand writes "Ananova has an article on the world's first tattooing robot.
An Austrian electrician, after being left with some permanent reminders
of his tattooing robot project, has unveiled his creation at a hi-tech
fair in Vienna.
He said that he had to test it on himself to get the robot do the right
thing and has not recieved any complaints from volunteers who got a tattoo
for free at the trade fair."
Will those tatoos be in 15 or 16 bit colour? ;)
Is it just me, or does that tattoo look really bad? It looks like something a little kid would draw on some paper, why would somebody want that on their body for the rest of their lives??
magnanomous.
So is the robot gruff, look like a biker and makes fun of your tattoo choice as well as laugh when you scream?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
A Sadistic PalmOS powered Etcha Sketch! This really is a bit of a leg-puller isn't it?
I mean, a guy with the genius(?) to come up with a robot like this, doesn't have brains enough to do the development and testing on a leg of lamb first??
"I haven't had any complaints yet." said Mr Passath.
Yes, thats because all your customers are lying on the floor with severed arteries.
"Note to self: Must write limb-diameter-compensation algorhythm....."
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
It would go something like this.
First write in your design...ok
(I draw a dragon or something and then press whatever button)
now tattooing....done
Look at tattoo and see that it says,
"1) pick up kids
2) pay bills
3) apt. with proctologist"
oh, no!
i've been telling a lot of people as of late that my software project is just plain painful.
;-P
i stand corrected. this is a REAL painful software project. what kind of version tracking does it employ? does it write something like version 0.82 in the corner of each tattoo with each build?
so does then does this guy have like 82 different beta tests on his arms/ elsewhere? what exactly does a buffer overflow/ divide by zero crash in tattoo form FEEL like? insert your own joke here.
nevermind, i don't want to know.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just in case anyone is interested in purchasing one of these you may find this useful.
ERR01 - "EAGLE? I thought you said BEAGLE."
ERR02 - "We're all out of red, so I used pink."
ERR03 - "There are 2 O's in Bob, right?"
ERR04 - "Sorry, sir, your chest will only hold the bottle dinghy."
ERR05 - "SEGFAULT"
ERR06 - "Anything else you want to say? You've got plenty of room back here."
ERR07 - "I'll bet you can't tell I've never done this before."
ERR08 - "The flag's all done and, you know, the folds of fat make a nice waving effect."
Disclaimer - adapted from this source
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treen_81 is now online
The quastion is, do you want an original hand made one, or a printout, permanently etched into your skin.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Printer ink cartridge empty. Using secondary output; tattoo device.
Look a monkey!
How generous! They always give out the samples for free. And how much does the robotic tattoo remover cost? (See Dr. Seuss, The Sneetches .)
Who the heck volunteers for these things? No matter how confident you are in a complete stranger covered with screwed-up tattoos in a booth, do you know tattoos are murder to get rid of? I guess the risk looks pretty small compared to a robotic vasectomy or X-piercing machine, powered by an OS popularly associated with corrupted address books.
And while you're here, we need some volunteers to test the experimental anthrax vaccine... No, it's OK, 3 out of 4 sheep live to say it's da bomb.
Does anyone else disbelieve every single story they read on Ananova? Just wondering. As far as I can tell they're one step up from the Weekly World News.
--
RumorsDaily
now has "hello, world!" tattooed onto his arm?
Or you get a bunch of gibberish
that quickly covers you entire body.
You realize that you forgot to install the Postscript module.
The the only movie I can remember with a robot tattooing someone is "Starship Trooper" - any other examples?
And I don't see much of a future for this.
I mean its a cool piece of work (I'm an AIBO owner and love stuff like this) but in the end Tattooing is more art than science, and I'm not sure the Robot can sub for the Artist, except in a purely mechanical way.
Where the Robot might be useful is covering in large areas of skin with single colours (back, stomach, etc), but I don't see much capability here for detail work. And its not clear to me how the Robot handles blood - a human artist will wipe it away, restablish boundaries (i.e., check progress against finished design) and continue tattooing. If the Robot doesn't do this you're gonna be one bloody camper - litterally dripping! - by the time its over.
Its not clear to me how the Robot determines depth. By this I mean how deep the needle is penetrating. If your Artist (human or Robot) doens't go deep enough, your growing skin will just push the design out as new cells form under the ink. Driving the needle too deep is another set of problems - potentially severe - as well.
How will the Robot handle different skin? Everyones skin is different and absorbs ink differently. This is really a judgement call on the artists part - different coloured ink looks different on different peoples skin. You just can't use a bottle of RED and assume it will look the same on any two people because it won't. A good artist will adapt to this problem, both in real time (i.e., while the work is being done) and before the work begins.
Also, don't forget that more complex 'Tats typically take multiple sessions, so you'll have a calibration problem next time you visit (i.e., aligning the machine and the existing 'Tat).
Its not uncommon for some back pieces to take months if not years, involving dozens of sessions so these registration problems are potentially major.
A message from our sponsor
When you got to a tattoo shop and say I want this tattoo the artist makes it and puts a bit of their style into it and it comes out unique to you. This robot will probably create the exact same tattoo for everyone that picks one out of a book.
'...appears to do its work with uniform regularity. As it quivers, its points pierce the skin of the body which is itself quivering from the vibration of the Bed. So that the actual progress of the sentence can be watched, the Harrow is made of glass. Getting the needles fixed in the glass was a technical problem, but after many experiments we overcame the difficulty. No trouble was too great for us to take, you see. And now anyone can look through the glass and watch the inscription taking form on the body. Wouldn't you care to come a little nearer and have a look at the needles?'
The explorer got up slowly, walked across, and bent over the Harrow. 'You see,' said the officer, 'there are two kinds of needles arranged in multiple patterns. Each long needle has a short one beside it. The long needle does the writing, and the short needle sprays a jet of water to wash away the blood and keep the inscription clear. Blood and water together are then conducted here through small runnels into this main runnel and down a waste pipe into the pit.'
(excerpted from In The Penal Colony, Franz Kafka, 1919)I suspect that the eventual use for this tech might be more along the lines of tattooing livestock etc, not people. I have no idea if livestock are tattooed for any reason (is branding still used?) but if you had to put tracking #'s on a large number of cows this might be the fastest way to do it. Needless to say, and at the risk of peripherally invoking Godwin's Law, I really hope nobody ever again wants to put tracking #'s on large numbers of people :-(
Freedom: "I won't!"
Will someone please start a sourceforge project to get this ported to Windows? I can't wait to see people with BSOD permanently displayed on their bodies.
- This and all my posts are public domain. I am a Physicist. I am not your Physicist. This is not Physically advice
He missed a big market for people wanting to get the DeCSS code tattooed on them.. I'd like to see a collection of ThinkGeekish one-liners or icons..
/bin/laden..
the I/O power button right over your heart..
chmod +x
"tattoo" in binary..
WTF?
STFU
the LNX or MP3 oval sticker
foo on one arm and bar on the other (or knuckles like jake & elwood)..
Intelligent Life on Earth
Ok, to qualify this... I would not let this particular little robot tattoo me, simply because it is far too primitive (I mean a 320x240 resolution?... uhhh, no thanks I'll pass)
..... Oh man I need to lay down...
Now the merits of this idea, since this thing is a robot you will never have to worry about it getting drunk and fscking up your tattoo. It is capable of working very quickly, think about getting a tattoo that would normally take hours to do in only a few minutes (This would be ideal for those who don't care for pain as much as some people seem to)
The tattoo will not just be a duplicate copy as you could write the software to randomly modify a few small factors such as particular color shades and small design elements to continue to have the one of a kind feel to the tattoo. I would most likely choose to use this with adobe Photoshop.
Ok, how would this be done? I have a few ideas as to the particulars. This guy has already created an interface between the robotic mechanism and the command unit (palm in this case) so changing out the command interface shouldn't really be a big deal, I would hook up something like a 1.8 Ghz desktop to this thing (if portability was a concern use a laptop). For the software end of things I would choose to use Adobe Photoshop as that way only four passes would be necessary to render a full color tattoo (CYMK) using Photoshop to separate the color channels.
And now for Johnny Carson's top ten reasons to have a robot do your tattoo...
1. It won't try to steal money from your wallet when you pass out from the pain.
2. It doesn't smell like camel cigarettes and cheap whiskey.
3. You won't have to listen to it tell really bad stories.
4. Yeah the equipment was sterilized, but when was the last time the artist was bathed?
5. The robot will never puke on you in the middle of a tattoo.
6. You can be sure the robot isn't going to try to get you drunk and take you home for a wild night of tattoos, sex, and odd things done with barnyard animals.
7. Who wants a tattoo to take four hours, this baby can do them in four minutes.
8. No bad breath in your face.
9. I'm pretty sure the robot doesn't do cocaine...
10. The robot will not be giving your girlfriend lewd looks while working on your tattoo and making fun of you when you scream, and telling you your a pansy ass bitch, and asking her why she would stay with a bitch, and it won't ask her if she wants a real robot, and
heh, I guess this does have some advantages... If only it was a bit more advanced (although not "bender" advanced)