I once worked at a really cool company that had robots that could do handwriting. I thought it would be cool to get the robots to draw pictures of people, and after a little hacking I had a prototype UI that could convert bitmaps to traceable vector paths.
Since then I have worked on automating the process. I have a half-built machine that will be able to do pen plotter stuff, without any connection to the internet. I am currently using a Cricut machine to render plotter art which ties me to the useless bored mom cloud. Also I can't use the machine without internet... NOT OK!
The biggest problem with the Cricut cloud is the process is so clunky and painful that I cannot do "realtime" drawings. The process of bouncing between my UI and the awful cricut cloud makes the process too labor intensive for me to talk to people and do the P.T. Barnum thing while I also execute the art. I would love to have an assistant but I cannot afford it.
So I have a machine, eventually I will be able to run a server process on a raspi listening for requests, and when it gets one it will execute some gcode to do some drawing.
I also have figured out how to use a DSLR library to control cameras.
The end goal is for camera to fire, automated tracing to run, and then the robot should kick out a sketch in 3 mins or less
It's called "Robot Draws You!" because people couldn't understand what "facetrace" meant and I also found existing companies using that wordmark / term.
I have been dragging this project behind my failing career for about 6-7 years now. I hope to get back to it.... I'm not giving up. I love making vector pen plotter artwork but unfortunately I am a shining example of the starving artist stereotype.
https://www.instagram.com/robotdrawsyou/
On one hand I feel bad for holding onto this project and not being able to give up. On the other hand, it's too cool and enjoyable for me to let go of. If I can get a MVP demo working, I'll be able to bring it to parties and hopefully get paid to do "photo booth" style events. I also would like to use the project as an educational tool to teach people the difference between bitmap and vector graphics.
If anybody wants to join me in this project or is interested in funding me send an email to mat at vtapi dot co