The Fraunhofer Institute shows off a robot at CeBIT that could take a digital photo and convert it into a drawing. Its day job is measuring the performance of reflective materials.
The Fraunhofer Institute usually uses this robot for gauging the quality of new reflective materials, but at the CeBIT show in Hanover, Germany, it used it to draw portraits. The robot took a digital photo of a person, processed it digitally, drew a line-art portrait, showed it off, erased it, then started over again.
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Subject poses for a robot-drawn portrait
A CeBIT attendee poses for his Fraunhofer robot portrait.
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CeBIT portrait-drawing robot clutches its pen
Fraunhofer's portrait-drawing robot is shown here clutching a pen, but it also can pick up an eraser and the portrait itself.
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Fraunhofer's portrait-drawing robot
Fraunhofer's robot has a camera mounted on top--the white box--to take the subject's photo before converting it to a line-art drawing.
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Fraunhofer's portrait-drawing robot
The robot points directly at a subject to take her photo before drawing a portrait.