Robobob: Life of the party

Dancing robots have been around for some time now, I'll give you that. Generally they are simply scripted lists of moves which are synchronized (or not) to a particular song. It took some hard work, but I've managed to take a different approach:



This dance isn't scripted! It's being generated based on the music being played, which means that Robobob will dance in time with any music you care to play to him!

Well, most music. The tempo is detected using a Fast Fourier Transform, which can separate beats and bass-lines from the rest of the music. This works great for songs with a strong bass component, but doesn't work so well on music composed of higher frequencies or vocals.

Simply place your robobuilder on the nearest sub woofer though, and you should be in business!

Watch in amazement as your robotic buddy dances along (almost) in time to the beat!

Impress your friends with his funky dancing styles consisting of over TWO distinct moves!

Computers 103

The gnome is back! This time, he has a very important message for you about registers. Please give him your undivided attention, or there may be consequences. 0_o

I hope you are enjoying these comics. I will be making more of them, but I am also working on upgrading Robobob. I think you will be pleasantly surprised, so check back soon!

Computers 102

For your amenity, the next installment of "inside your CPU" is avaliable below. If your screen is big enough, you shouldn't even need to scroll. The previous issue can be even be found here. Convenience!!

(If you don't get the joke in the last panel, it is because the "take one down" action will eventually set the zero flag in the status register, but the "pass it around" line will never set the zero flag. The branch instruction can only know about the results of the operation immediately before it, so the gnome will eventually die of alcohol poisoning. THINK OF THE GNOMES!)

In other exciting news, the source code I used to make this video is now avaliable. You can find it here. There are a few improvements and bug fixes.