Using AR to Actuate a Second Head

Arduino Computers & Mobile Craft & Design
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I first met Thomas Edwards at an Artomatic opening (DC’s annual art free-for-all). He had an awesome piece, called Sycophant. It was a mannequin head on a track that ran along a wall in a hallway, detecting and following people, and saying things like: “I love your hair,” “Have you lost weight?,” and my favorite, “I want to lick you.” I’ve been following Thomas’ work ever since and love all of the interaction over the internet technologies and tech art that he experiments with.

Here, he’s messing around with using augmented reality (AR) to track his head movements and translate them to a servo-actuated mannequin head. The idea is fairly straight-forward. He’s using the ARToolkit to track the pan angle of a fiduciary mark on his head, converting it to serial data, sending it to a ‘Duino, and then having the MCU set the servo angle of a Robotzone DDP155 pan table.

Second Head

4 thoughts on “Using AR to Actuate a Second Head

  1. Pete Prodoehl says:

    I met Thomas back in DC many years ago as well, and he’s always got something amazing he’s working on. :)

  2. sean hathaway says:

    This is great. Plus, find yourself a mannequin torso and you have a WIN for the HOV lanes on the Beltway.

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Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

View more articles by Gareth Branwyn

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