Planet Arduino

When you step out in public, you’ll often be filmed by a number of cameras and perhaps even be analyzed by tracking software of some kind. The Watchman robot head by Graham Jessup, however, makes this incredibly obvious as it detects and recognizes facial movements, then causes a pair of eyeballs to follow you around.

The 3D-printed system — which is a modified version of Tjhazi’s Doorman — uses a Raspberry Pi Camera to capture a live video feed, along with a Raspberry Pi Zero and a Google AIY HAT for analysis.

This setup passes info on to an Arduino Uno that actuates the eyeballs via a 16-channel servo shield and a number of servos. The device can follow Jessup up, down, left, and right, making for a very creepy robot indeed!

If you take an object and turn it into something else, does that constitute a hack?  Can a musical robot call to question the ethics of firearms exports? If you take a disabled shotgun and turn it into a flute, does it become an art piece? Deep questions indeed — and deliberately posed by [Constantine Zlatev] along with his collaborators [Kostadin Ilov] and [Velina Ruseva].

The Last Gun — a mechano-robotic flute, as [Zlatev] calls it — is built from recovered industrial parts, played using compressed air, and controlled by an Arduino and Raspberry Pi. After graphing the annual arms exports from the United States, the installation plays a mournful tune for each year that they rise, and a jubilant theme for each year they fall.

While The Last Gun appears to be a modified and improved over the previous version — which looks somewhat like a mad engineer’s harp — details are sadly scant on the machining and build processes. However, left to their own devices, one can expect to see many more mechanically musical projects in this team’s future — wherein the actuating of servos pluck at the hearts and minds of its participants.

If instead you’re keen on a jam session with a more humanoid robot, that’s also an option.

[Thanks for the tip, Itay!]

Artist David Cranmer's "Stakcgrox" is a 3.5 meter tall robotic crow with a rotating head and glowing eyes that shoot lasers.

Read more on MAKE

The post Giant Fog-Breathing Robotic Crow Shoots Lasers appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.