Meet Exuro, The Arduino-Brained Kinect-Tracking Flame-Shooting Bot

Photo by Karma Elmusa, Oakland North

If you stopped by Oakland industrial arts center The Crucible this time last year, you might have caught a glimpse of Exuro during their Fireside Lounge event over Valentine’s Day weekend. Built with Kinect, Arduino, recycled components (recycled as in would have been thrown away or combined in an entirely novel fashion), as well as parts fabricated at Crucible classes, Exuro was modified for the event to act as a kiss-bot, shooting a giant flame into the sky whenever someone gave her a gentle kiss on her cold steel chassis. Exuro has since been upgraded with a modified bill collector robot (named Adepto), to accept donations for the Crucible – and still shoot said giant flame into the sky with every dollar bill! And now she’s entered as a contestant in the Project Remake Contest, presented by Schick, a contest challenging makers to remake the world, turning would-be junk into something useful, beautiful, or just plain cool! You can read more about Exuro on her maker’s website, by “modern day Renaissance man” Peter Kropf. Some of you may recognize Peter’s name because he gave a talk last month at PyCon 2012 on Python Meets the Arduino starring, you guessed it, Exuro!

Watch her eyes track and move below using a Kinect, and the software that powers her gimbal eyes is available here on github.