Monkey Meets Robot
by Tony Longworth on August 13, 2011One comment
‘Monkey Business’ is a charming art installation that uses a monkey puppet that can mimic the viewer’s movements. Jan M. Sieber and Ralph Kistler combined an XBOX Kinect and some Arduino motors to make the puppet respond to what it ‘sees’.
The system consists of a tracking camera sensor (Microsoft XBox Kinect) on top of the toy monkey for tracking the visitor‘s movements, a hidden computer to analyze and convert the tracking data (OpenNI Framework, osceleton, OSC), a programming patch (Processing) to process the data into movement angles and send it to a microcontroller board (Arduino) inside the toy‘s body, which controls ten servo motors attached to a metal sceleton and in this way moves the ape‘s arms, legs, head and body.
Check out the behind-the-scenes documentary on the creation process:
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One comment
Jeff Shyluk on August 15, 2011 at 12:55 am. #
One of the first things an artist should learn when they graduate up to a class that has decent instruction is not to let the character’s tail dangle down between its legs. Audiences automatically relate that to a phallus.
While some audiences like phalluses a lot, those particular audiences tend not to shower artists with megabucks. The audiences that don’t like phalluses tend to engage in media campaigns to get artists banned.
Two lessons learned: there is no such thing as bad press, and monkeys do let it all hang out. I suppose that’s part of their charm.
Bonus lesson for rookie animators: ususally, you stick the tail so that it points off to the left or right, and not let it get caught between the character’s legs. Go look at great character design if you don’t believe me.