The Lightplot Is A Lighting Painting Robot Evolving From Lego NXT

One of the more interesting things to see in this era (aside a healthy big mac) is an ongoing synergy between light painting and rapid prototyping platforms like arduino and NXT Lego sets.

The Lightplot, created by Ben Cowell-Thomas, is a light painting robot that started as an NXT experiment and evolved into a huge project involving a massive robotic arm, a animation to movement software and a tiny LED.

The software is cool enough to control both the camera shutter and the robotic arm to create wonderful light painting animations. (Kinda like sticking an LED strip on a telescope mount on steroids)

Here is a quick demo of its capabilities followed by a short behind the scenes video

Ben has a comperhansive making of post on his blog.