Van Gogh Self Portrait

Vincent Van Lego: when someone walks in front of him, his ear falls off, revealing a bloody stump. This is triggered by a break-beam sensor. We made the ear all by ourselves, but we found the picture here: http://www.brothers-brick.com/2007/03/03/fine-art-legod/. This is my favorite conceptually, but the most difficult in practice. Similar mechanism to the Mona Lisa, except up and down motion rather than side to side: the ear is glued to two tiny magnets, which are attracted to two other magnets that are glued to the red LEGO on the other side of the canvas. This could be challenging because of the added friction. Also, it was difficult to time the control of the ear's motion so that it would go up and down exactly the right distance. We had to add extra LEGOs to the frame for reinforncment as the motor would cause the whole robot to rock.

Here is the PicoBlocks program that controlled Vincent. No bad puns come to mind at the moment.