What happens when you connect AI and cameras to an Etch-a-Sketch? These robot-builders found out

Whenever you come throughout a kind of web moments that makes you smile it’s a magical feeling and that’s what occurred after we found this superb challenge on the Every Flavor of Robot YouTube channel – a channel that has been round for lower than a 12 months.

These self-confessed nerds determined they needed to exhibit one thing at this 12 months’s Open Sauce conference to be held in San Francisco in the course of June, however on the time they realized they solely had two weeks to give you an thought to be accepted.

That they had been messing round with an outdated Etch-a-Sketch, making an attempt to attract an ideal circle by hand when the thought sport to them to construct a robotic to regulate the retro toy and, utilizing motors, get it to attract cool-looking photos.

The thought then superior to including a digital camera that will take an image, use AI to transform the image to G-Code (the identical type of code as a 3D printer makes use of), after which ship the code to the motors which might then flip the wheels of the Etch-a-Sketch and recreate the image life in a matter of seconds.

We’re not even going to say, ‘sounds easy sufficient’ as a result of it doesn’t, however the boys began out with prototyping solidly for 2 weeks, firstly making an attempt to get the toy to attract a easy sq., breaking one within the course of earlier than shifting on to a gear and belt-drive system to attempt to not stress the machine an excessive amount of.

Including within the digital camera to take photos after which create Etch-A-Sketch artwork was one of many final issues they did and after many code iterations and tweaks, they lastly realized that they had one thing that labored.

The video above reveals the complete journey and is effectively price half an hour of your time. In the direction of the top, we are able to see simply how good the code and machine has gotten at drawing with the Etch-a-Sketch and we look ahead to seeing what occurs after they take it to Open Sauce in a couple of weeks time.