The Pixelbot 3000 turns simple AI prompts into Lego mosaic masterpieces

A devoted YouTuber has designed and built a Lego printer that tin automate the process of assembling elaborate brick-built mosaics, akin to Lego’s creation sets similar da Vinci’s Mona Lisa oregon Hokusai’s The Great Wave. But portion the instauration draws inspiration from different Lego printer called the Bricasso, it streamlines the process utilizing AI.

Although technically awesome erstwhile it debuted 8 years ago, Jason Allemann’s Bricasso required a analyzable process wherever mosaic designs had to beryllium manually created, printed connected paper, and past scanned by the machine’s camera. The YouTube transmission Creative Mindstorms utilized immoderate customized codification and AI, truthful generating a Lego mosaic requires 1 elemental input.

With the Pixelbot 3000, users simply person to benignant successful what artwork they privation the printer to create. The punctual is sent to OpenAI’s DALL-E 3, which the underlying codification requests arsenic being generated successful a cartoon benignant to nutrient a simplified representation that’s 1024 x 1024 pixels successful size.

The mosaics assembled by the printer are constricted to a overmuch smaller grid that’s conscionable 32 x 32 Lego tiles successful size, but alternatively of resizing the representation generated by DALL-E 3 to marque it smaller, the Pixelbot 3000’s codification divides the AI-generated representation into a 32 x 32 grid and samples the colour of the halfway pixel successful each square. This results successful a high-contrast scaled representation that produces a amended mosaic successful the end.

Another regulation imposed by utilizing Lego arsenic an creator mean is that the integrative bricks are lone disposable successful astir 70 antithetic colors, and the Pixelbot 3000 uses conscionable 15 of them. The scaled AI-generated representation requires 1 last walk to find the closest lucifer of each colored pixel to the 1 x 1 Lego tiles utilized to assemble the last mosaic.

Designing, building, and programming the Pixelbot 3000 seems similar it would beryllium conscionable arsenic overmuch enactment arsenic assembling 1 of Lego’s mosaic artworks, which can beryllium implicit 11,000 pieces successful size. If you’re truly looking to de-stress, conscionable instrumentality 15 minutes and ticker Creative Mindstorms’ process arsenic the Pixelbot 3000 goes from a conception to a functional reality.