When an affinity for electronics meets a wide streak of morbid curiosity, the results are truly artistic. They are also freaking awesome. Behold what your contribution to arts grants around the world can produce:

Garnet Hertz – Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Implanted Webserver

This is one wired frog. When it’s up and running (usually at Very Serious Art Exhibitions) a webpage enables people around the world to control the frog via the web server embedded in its body, as it lies suspended in an arty glass cube filled with mineral oil.

While we are oohing and ahhing over the teeny weeny servos, and the simply *precious* linear actuators controlling the leg kicking portion of the art piece, like any good roboticist we’re dissecting it and thinking of ways we could make it niftier. So far we’re thinking artful deployment of muscle wire and a BASIC stamp or other microcontroller with an L293D stuck into it would make for a pretty good array of controllability. The zip ties are a nice touch though.

Also, why stop at frogs? We have a pair of taxidermied mice in the RoBunker that are just BEGGING for a little soft-shoe number to “Tea For Two” or something similar. There’s also a pothos plant in the corner that could use a little remote controlled tentacle action, if you know what we mean.

Excuse us, SB has a little tinkering to do.

[Mange Takk to Le Boing]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 11:43 am and is filed under RoboToys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.