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Innovation

Video: MIT's agent robot draws what you draw

A flying phantograph (for people who think copy machines are lame).
Written by Greg Nichols, Contributing Writer

MIT has created a pretty cool "phantograph," a machine that mimics the way humans draw. The twist? This phantograph is a drone.

The system tracks pen movements as a user draws on a desk. These movements are captured by a computer, go through transformations pipeline, and are output through a drone's motion that draws on a larger canvas.

The authors of the recent paper explain their project:

In this paper, we use drone technology to create a computer-powered flying agent that allows pen drawing at different scales and locations. The unrestricted motion of the agent provides unlimited possibilities of carrying out various artistic distortions of a user's hand drawing in real-time, creating a new dynamic medium of creative expression.
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