A Wall-Mounted Robot That Can Draw and Color Vector Shapes Based on Computer Commands

Swiss technologist Jurg Lehni has created a wonderful wall-mounted directed drawing tool named Otto that can draw and color vector shapes that have been input into a computer. Otto is currently on display and in use at The Interval Bar and Café at The Long Now Foundation in San Francisco. In an interview with Fusion, Lenhi spoke about how he comes up with his ideas and his desire to make all of his designs open source.

For me its all about the gestures of machines. Are they making something? You know how is it moving there. There’s actually that potential in there – that sort of hidden potential in machine gestures. One of the concerns in in the work is to communicate this openness in technology. The devices I build are often quite transparent, for example the cases are open, you see inside, you see how to build one thing. There is this question why doesn’t it exist? For me it’s really important because I kind of want to get to the bottom of each and I want to give it a voice and identity in dialogue with others.