Categories: Technology

Computer Driven Punk Graffiti Bot Tags With Paintball Bullets

I never thought I’d write so many trendy words in one title. Those words describe something that I think is über innovative and cool. Graffiti has been done by spray cans, light and even water and cleaning chemicals, but I don’t ever think I have seen graffiti done by a robot shooting paintball bullets before. At least not a robot doing it. That’s just why this thing is so exciting (spoken from the geek within me).

Benjamin Gaulon, the mastermind behind the project, has created this terminator precision master gadget and dubbed it “PrintBall“. This is a robot that shoots paintballs after a pattern carefully entered into a computer driven software. The precision is so exact that Benjamin even asked one of his buddies to stand in front of it so that the robot could fire those paint filled balls straight at him. Of course, he didn’t hit him or even nudge him. The precision is so exact that the paint almost didn’t touch his clothes, barely creating a humanoid pattern around him.

To explain it would be to wreck and completely exhaust my vocabulary so I will just put it in Mr. Gaulon’s own words:

Benjamin Gaulon – “The PrintBall is a graffiti Robot. It works like a giant Ink-Jet printer using a PaintBall Gun as print-head. The PaintBall gun is mounted on a custom made pan & tilt unit, which is connected to a software programmed with Max/Msp: PrintWare 6.0 (G.M.L compatible).

The pan & tilt is controlled by an Atmel chip [programmed in Basic] allowing the PrintWare 6.0 software to move the two stepper motors and to trigger the PaintBall Gun. The software allows the users to load, analyse and shot images. The resolution of the image can be adjusted according to the number of steps between each points.

Using the Graffiti Markup Language (GML) the PrintBall, a Graffiti Robot made of a PaintBall Gun and a custom made Pan&Tilt Unit controlled by a Max/Msp based software, was able to shot a Graffiti created by TEMPT on the EyeWriter.”

There you have it. Pretty simple huh? The robot is every geek’s dream and if made mobile, this thing could change paintball games forever. What’s next? Android paintball enemies driving mobile and computer controlled paintball tanks? I guess Mr. Gaulon will have to ponder that one for a few more days…

Richard Darell

Richard Darell is the founder and CEO of Bit Rebels, a multifaceted online news outlet that reports daily on the latest developments in technology, social media, design and everything geek. Today this media entity welcomes more than 3.5 million unique visitors per month and is considered the go-to place for people in constant motion. As an Internet entrepreneur, he is dedicated to constantly trying to develop new ways to bring content faster and closer to the end user in a more streamlined way. His excitement for statistics has allowed him to further develop systems that continuously produce accurate and fast-paced analytics to better optimize the approach by which Bit Rebels presents news and content. His graphic design background has proven to be an important tool when designing new systems and features for Bit Rebels since the development of solid and stable code depends entirely on their structure and implemented procedures. Richard currently resides in Stockholm, Sweden and directs the Bit Rebels offices in both Stockholm and Atlanta. You can reach Richard at richard@bitrebels.com