Slashdot Mirror
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? ;)
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
------
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!
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.
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!"