Sisyphus is an art installation by [Kachi Chan] featuring two scales of robots engaged in endless cyclic interaction. Smaller robots build brick arches while a giant robot pushes them down. As [Kachi Chan] says “this robotic system propels a narrative of construction and deconstruction.” The project was awarded honorary mention at the Ars Electronica’s Prix Ars 2022 in the Digital Communities category. Watch the video after the break to see the final concept.
[Kachi Chan] developed the installation in pre-visualizations and through a series of prototypes shown in a moody process film, the second video after the break. While the film is quite short on details, you’ll see iterations of the robot arm and computer vision system. According to this article on the project [Kachi Chan] used Cinema 4D to simulate the motion, ROS for control, PincherX150 robotic arms modified with Dynamixel XM 430 & XL430 servo motors, and custom 3D prints.
We’ve covered another type of Sisyphus project, sand tables like this and the Sisyphish.
beautiful analogue of my life
I try to build things
big brother tears them down
You’re not building the right things
Same here :) :(
Same here, but it is I myself who tears them down.
ok but like that’s actually a pretty hard robotics problem
But can it do assemblages?
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu: Can’t Help Myself
a bloody hydraulic mess of a robot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS4Bpr2BgnE
Very cool, and interesting robotics work. Though mythologically it’s less like Sisyphus — who doesn’t have an agent destroying his work, just gravity — and more like the Buddhist hell for children. Condemned to the shores of Hell’s boundary river (they can’t cross over either because they can’t pay the ferryman because they lack life experience or because they sinned by having their parents outlive them), they must stack up stones to try to build towers to climb to heaven on, only to have demons knock their piles down. (At least, those are the details I’m familiar with from the Japanese traditions.) I did read the writeup, which gives reasons for calling it “Sisyphus” — but I sort of wonder whether the reference was changed for Western consumption?
Can someone let me know how to access realsense camera data without connecting then to usb c? as far as I see, the cameras on smaller robotic arms are not connected. Is it only for asthetic purpose or is there a genuine way to get information from them?