‘IBR roomba swarm in the dark iii’, part of the ‘IBR roomba art‘ timelapse photo series by tobias baumgartner, marcus brandenburger, tom kamphans, alexander kroeller, and christiane schmidt of the IBR algorithm group of germany’s braunschweig university of technology

long used for more than just cleaning, as a popular choice for robotics programming courses and competitions, the roomba vacuum cleaner takes on a artistic undertaking in a series of timelapsed, ‘light painting’ photographs. in the most basic renditions, roomba owners attach coloured LEDs to the devices and let them roam for the duration of a long-exposure photograph. more enterprising photographers, like the IBR algorithm group at germany’s braunschweig university of technology, create designs by constructing obstacles, thereby designating space that the roombas cannot pass into and which thus remains dark. flickr user reconscious utilized accelerometer-driven LEDs so that the colour light varied depending on the roomba’s movement.

more roomba light paintings can be seen in the ‘roomba art‘ flickr group.

‘IBR roomba swarm in the dark iii’ by the IBR algorithm group at braunschweig university of technology

‘IBR roomba swarm in the dark xv’ by the IBR algorithm group at braunschweig university of technology

photograph by paul chavady

photograph by reconscious

photograph by steve doll

photograph by reconscious

photograph by mike bala

photograph by reconscious

process photograph: the roombas of the IBR algorithm group each feature a differently coloured LED

process photograph: the effect of text was accomplished by spelling out ‘IBR’ with boxes, creating a section that remained dark because the roombas could not travel there

left: reconscious outfitted his roomba with an accelerometer whose reading determines which of three LEDs is lit right: detail of the control – three coloured LEDs (bottom right), accelerometer (center), and arduino microcontroller (bottom left)

via colossal

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infiniti digital art competition designboom in collaboration with INFINITI is offering an international competition asking participants to design spectacular or interactive digital artworks, to be installed throughout europe and voted on to win the 10,000 euro first prize.

submissions may take the form of projection mapping, interactive sculptures, video or flash files, processing or max applications, or other digitally mediated works, but register now! the first round of the competition, featuring the theme ‘inspired performance’, ends friday, july 8th.