Page 186 - Hacking Roomba

Creating Art chapter

with Roomba

ne of the first things people did after they discovered how to con-
trol Roombas remotely was to put two of them in a ring and have
Othem fight. These Roomba Fights, as they’ve come to be called,
are funny in part because Roomba is not designed as a battle bot. Upon
reflection, it’s incongruous in another way too. The Roomba’s design is
friendly and non-threatening. It performs a mundane task. Its movements in this chapter
while working shift between the random organic and the elegant geometric.
It seems to be more of an artist than a fighter. Add a paintbrush to
You’ve already started exploring the artistic capabilities of Roomba in the Roomba
previous chapter. What can be accomplished musically with Roomba may
be limited, but those very limitations enable new ways of thinking about Learn the math
music and what is musical. Music isn’t constrained by a particular set of behind spiral curves
tools and is open to new expressive techniques. Witness the rise of the syn-
thesizer in modern music in the last 40 years. It has gone from academic Explore parametric
experiment to compositional requirement.
curves
As in music, painting and drawing are open to new technologies and new
expressive styles. The techniques range from cave drawings with charred Create art with
sticks to mega-pixel Photoshop images. There is no best technique for Roomba
producing art: all are valid. Paintings are sometimes judged on how photo-
realistic they are. This is almost always beside the point. A painting may
be about non-physical concepts, like belief or melancholy. Or it may explore
how colors and shapes can evoke feelings. A single octagon may not evoke
feelings but what about a red octagon? What about a red octagon with the
word stop in white letters? Humans are pattern-matching creatures and even
seemingly random combinations of color and shapes can provoke discussion
and have meaning to those viewing it. Even abstract drawings like those
produced by a spinning robot may be aesthetically pleasing.
As you’ve watched Roomba and experimented with its capabilities, you’ve
seen how it can move. Using that knowledge, this chapter explores how a
Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner can be used as a new way to make art. By
virtue of the commands used to control the robot, it’s natural to make it
move in complex circular spirals. Such moves look similar to the curves
made by a Spirograph, so the equations that produce such curves will be
explored and you’ll see how to implement a program that moves Roomba
in a similar fashion.