Art is pretty subjective, as one might find a particular drawing to be beautiful, while another might think of it as ugly or needing improvement. Whatever the case is, humans have always been pretty good at churning out art over the centuries, using a variety of tools to achieve that end. The MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group has a bunch of students who wanted to experiment with how a machine would come into play where art is concerned.
Basically, the machine here is a drone that in turn, can be classified as a flying phantograph. It will follow the movement of a human as he or she draws with a pen, and the camera will be able to capture the range of motion while a computer communicates it to the drone, which in turn mimics the flow of the pen.
Of course, this is far from perfect and will not yield a carbon copy of what has been drawn, since the pen that is attached to the drone will come in contact with the canvas, where the pressure applied in the direction of the canvas will result in a sideways friction. Definitely an idea worth exploring, and who knows, we might just celebrate the first drone art exhibition in the future?