“An exploration in art + robotics, representing wind through digital fabrication and the tangible” from Charles Aweida via prosthetic knowledge:
My recent exploration in new media art is centered around the concept of creating tangible artifacts from intangible forces. In this case a sculptural data visualization generated from the forces of wind. A physics engine Kangaroo physics by Daniel Piker is used to digitally simulate the effects of wind on a piece of cloth. The resulting cloth is frozen into a solidified triangular surface where information is extracted (surface normals) and transferred as a vector field forming an abstract representation of wind.
The resulting vector field is then converted into a series of cartesian planes within the grasshopper3d programming language for Rhino3d by David Rutten. The planes undergo a series of duplications and translations to create a conflict free robot fabrication sequence.
The resulting planes are then fed into HAL (robotic control sweet) where an inverse kinematics solver converts cartesian planes into joint angles which serve as instructions for the robot via ABB’s RAPID programming language. The robot instructions are centered around a sequence for the 6 axis arm to pick 6 inch nails from a dispenser and place them one by one into a piece of high density foam at their corresponding angles.