It's the Nevada desert. It's arid. There are thousands of people. There are blinky lights and LEDs are dominant. But no, it's not Burning Man.
While it's actually CES here, a flavor of Burning Man is in effect in the form of Titanoboa, a 50-foot-long electromechanical snake. Built by the Vancouver, B.C., arts collective EatArt, Titanoboa (which is here courtesy of its sponsor, Lenovo) showcases mobile and wireless technology; art and science; and plain fun.
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Microcontroller
Titanoboa has a 50-foot-long custom-welded column of aluminum vertebrae, and between each section is a universal joint (like a spinal cord). It's mobile thanks to hydraulic cylinders, and it works thanks to communication between six different "brains," or Arduino micro-controllers, like this one.
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App
The Titanoboa team is at CES thanks to sponsorship from Lenovo, which provided the team with tablets on which they're running a special app. Though this is an Android phone, it shows the basics of the app's potential -- which delivers real-time data such as battery voltage.
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Head from the front
A look at Titanoboa's head, as seen from the front.
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Working on Titanoboa
Two of the Titanoboa team work on the electromechanical snake after it accidentally ran over a piece of string, which subsequently got wrapped up in its inner workings.
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Mondo spider
An earlier project by the EatArt team is the Mondo Spider, a 1,600-pound, eight-legged walking machine originally built for Burning Man 2006.
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Passive wheels
The underside of Titanoboa features dozens of these wheels. But they are passive and are meant mostly to avoid scraping the underside of the massive snake.
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The works and the remote control
A look at several sections of Titanoboa and its remote controller.
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Titanoboa 2
Another look at Titanoboa, coiled up after slithering around.
