You might have a Roomba at home scurrying around your feet, and the Robo Faber created by artist Matthias Dörfelt has a similar vibe. This tiny robot isn’t designed to clean up after you, though. It’s sole lot in life is to draw random doodles on sheets of paper. Dörfelt programmed the robot with a semi-random algorithm that governs the creation of each sketch. The drawings together are part of an art project called Mechanical Parts.
Robo Faber itself has a footprint about the size of a small dinner plate. It’s a differential drive robot, meaning it has two dc motors. Encoders are positioned on each motor shaft that help the robot keep track of its location and allows it to draw straight, precise lines. An Arduino board acts as the brain of Robo Faber with all the art generated using the PaperJS graphics scripting framework.
Each random drawing is supposed to look intentional — like the robot is thinking about the next step as it glides across the surface. It really helps that it can draw amazingly straight lines and perfect curves. The messiness is all very deliberate in these doodles, but it looks organic.
Some of Robo Faber’s outputs do look like mindless doodles, but others actually look deliberate and very cool. However, Dörfelt has the whole project documented online and assures us the robot follows only basic rules about what to draw. With that in mind, there’s no need to panic if Robo Faber suddenly draws itself conquering the human race — it’s just random and definitely not a sign it has gained sentience.