My previous drawing robots have a very simple mechansim for holding markers—either a series of holes on Minus E or a tube on Scribbot. There was also no lifting mechanism, as my robots’ scribbly drawing style did not require it. This year, inspired by the pen-holding mechansim on pen plotters, I decided to add a similar mechansim to my drawing robot.

Back in 2017, I built my first mobile drawing robot for my undergraduate capstone at NYU Shanghai. Some of my design choices at the time were constrained by the resources and timeline. Now that I am back in school, pursing my master’s degree, I wanted to redesign the robot. My main goal was to make the robot smaller so it becomes more portable. I also thought this would be a nice challenge to practice my CAD skills and deepen my understanding of the electronics.

Inspired by 18th-century automatons such as the writer and the draughtsman by Jaquet-Droz, I wanted to create my own drawing automatons. In particular, I am hoping to build more accessible drawing automatons with a focus on enhanced programmability. As a first step, I decided to design a mechansim for drawing scribbly lines.

Yaogu, also known as the Waist Drum dance, is a traditional folk dance popular in my hometown region of Northern Shaanxi, China. Having lived away from my hometown for over a decade, I wanted to create something that would remind me of my fonding memories there.

For the graduate course, Introduction to Fabrication, that I took at Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), I spent a few weeks learning and experimenting with a variety of fabrication machines, tools, and materials. I embraced an iterative approach to fabrication and integrated computational techniques into my process. Here are all my experiments, each linked to its respective post:

I have always wanted to experiment with wood joinery and I finally decided that this is the week. During my research, I stumbled upon this interactive wood joint design system and wanted to create something similar in p5.js.

I was tasked to create an enclosure and I thought it would be fun to design an enclosure with an organic exterior. I wanted to continue exploring computational design approaches, so I started sketching in p5.js.

This week, I have been experimenting with laser engraving. I wanted to continue incorporating computational thinking into my process, so the first thing I thought of was to create a p5.js sketch for the laser engraver. Although raster files can be used for etching, I think it would be more interesting to generate a vector path for the laser engraver.

I have been making and posting daily creative coding experiments (on my Instagram) for almost 2 years now. One of the mathematical functions that keep coming back is a sine function (such as in the sketch below, which utilizes a combination of sine and cosine functions). As I have been studying fabrication techniques and mechanical movements recently, I had this idea of creating an automaton that visualizes a sine wave.

Introduction to Fabrication is a 7-week course that I am taking at ITP. While I have already had some experience with fabrication, I think, as I embark on my graduate journey at ITP, this will be a good introduction to the specific tools and machines that are available at the prototyping shop here. I also see this as a great opportunity to experiment, fail, and experiment again, a lot!