Slashdot Mirror
Hektor: the Graffiti Robot
Lopex writes "Gizmodo has a story about Hektor, a graffiti robot. Apparently it is for the extremely geeky (or perhaps extremely lazy) tagger. Hektor.ch has photos, information (pdf), and a movie (15 Mb) of it in action."
A variation of an XY plotter, hanging from cables, gravity pulls it in the Y direction.
A friend and I did something practically identical years ago for a tech shop project in high school, though we werent allowed to use spraypaint, so we had it draw on walls with magic markers, like a giant hanging etch-a-sketch. Worked pretty well, and really wasnt that complicated to build (QBasic "driver" software included)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I think this story is a dupe. Didn't they send two of these to Mars?
litigious bastards
suck it sco!
This just makes me wonder why similar technology hasn't been used for the giant advertisements that cover the entire side of buildings. From what I've seen, these are all done by living human artists, who do a remarkable job in most cases. But it would seem very realistic, and I'd think cheaper to use some kind of robotic painter that could replicate art on anything. Have I just missed the news, or is it Clear Channel holding back the progress of technology?
Here's the old post.
My other sig is a Porsche.
A direct link to a 15MB .mov file on the front page of slashdot? Does someone REALLY not like the people who run that server or something?
Yeah, a nice bit of javascript that opens over a half dozen windows in rapid-fire order, ordered a CD from Amazon using my account, sent a flaming email to GWB, redirected me to the goat-whatever guy, played the Dean Scream, and then crashed Mozilla. Well, ok, only the bit about opening up a bunch of photos.
[RANT]Folks- popup windoid things as part of your website are like talking appliances. Every so often, designers get it in their heads that it's a Hot Idea, and then everyone drags them out into the street and demonstrates how the current generation of designers got their new jobs. If I want to open something on your site in a new window, I'll goddamn hold down the modifier key and THEN click the link, thanks much.[/RANT]
Please help metamoderate.
and even graphitti artists will begin to wonder why they put up with the freezing cold, cops, etc. when they could just hook up one of these and lurk in the shadows until it's done. No more lugging around twenty cans of spraypaint.
Right, now they just have to lug around twenty cans of spraypaint, one hundred feet of rope, a level, a ladder, something to attach the rope to the side of the building with, a laptop, data cable, and a robot.
Then, if the cops haven't come after someone complained of the racket of ladders hitting the sides of buildings and boltguns bolting the rope onto the side of a brick building, they may do all the lurking in the shadows they wish while the robot spends a half an hour drawing a landscape.
if you click on the jpg link... consider yourself warned
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Video available here
PDF available here