Anprino Light Painter

The light painting technique is nothing new. It consists of taking long exposure photographs while someone, or something, moves with coloured lights in dark spaces. This usually gives visually interesting results.

Anprino Robot

We can use a robot and its movements as a basis these projects. We’re going to use an Anprino robot, but the basics of the light painter bot can be done with any other type od educational robot, provided that your robot has programmable leds, can be programmed, and you have access to a smartphone.

An Anprino is an educational robot developed by portuguese teachers at ANPRI. It’s goal is to use 3D printing, arduino and visual coding to enable a low-cost, highly customizable robotics platform for schools.

Mobile phones generally have powerful cameras. Usually, we value its capacity in megapixels, but photography applications allows us to go further. In addition to automatic modes, optimized for various environmental conditions, they provide access to digital versions of traditional photographic tools and techniques. Using these settings, we can explore more creative photography options, which require us to excercise greater user control over our smartphone camera.

In this robotics projects, we can combine technology and arts, always from an educational perspective. Hence this scenario proposal, crossing photography with coding and robotics. 

Learning goals:

Develop coding and robotics skills and knowledge;

Use coding and robotics in tangible projects;

Blend learning arts and ICT concepts;

Use mobile devices in educational settings;

Learn about photography (framing, white balance, temperature, film sensibility, exposure, shutter speed).

Note: attached photos are from a robotics club early test of this scenario.