— September 20th, 2021
Jackson Pollock was famous for his unique style of splattering large blobs of paint across a canvas, and it was this technique that JBV Creative was trying to imitate. But rather than working by hand to painstakingly dip a brush into paint and then flinging it many times over, he wanted to build a robot that could do this task for him while still creating art.
The main part of the Flingbot, the name JBV gave to his system, is comprised of a catapult arm that is capable of both rotating and adjusting how far it can throw paint. A servo motor at the back pulls an elastic band a certain amount based on the desired distance, and a second one releases a pin to perform the launching action. As another parameter for generating abstract art, the silicone scoop itself can bend to change its shape. Every servo motor is connected to a single SSC-32U servo controller board that receives commands from an Arduino Uno.
Paint gets dispensed from one of the 12 total reservoirs that each has a gravity-feeder out its base with a servo motor that controls how much paint is deposited into the scoop. Once all of the paint has been collected for a launch, the Uno adjusts the angle and tension of the arm and finally releases the paint.
To see how JBV Creative constructed this robot and a glimpse of the wildly unpredictable artwork it produced, check out his video below as well as his project write-up here.
