Mona Lisa

Her eyes really follow you. We found the picture here: http://www.likecool.com/Lego_Disguise_Mona_Lisa--Pic--Gear.html. We took googly eyes, cut out the cardboard pupils and put in tiny magnetic pupils (we took a hole puncher to a magnetic poetry piece and rescued the little circles). Behind the painting, there is a LEGO with two magnets on it. When you move the LEGO, the pupils move. This motion was created using a motion module (shown below).

The motor is activated when light beams at foot level are broken. This setup is called a break-beam sensor. If the left beam is broken before the right, the pupils will move to the right, and vice versa. The things at the bottoms of the two wires in the picture below are the PicoCricket light sensors.

My favorite snippets of dialogue about this robot from the exhibition:

Dad: How do you think the Mona Lisa knows we're standing here?
Young son: Physics.

Also:
Kid: Now, that's just creepy.

This is the PicoBlocks code for this painting that I like to call the Da Vinci Code. Sorry.

MonaLisa code

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