Robot Scans Onion, Sculpts It, No Tears

There’s something disturbing about a robot that silently stalks an onion, while welding a laser and just biding it’s time. It watches and waits patiently to sculpt it in 3D.

David Bowen’s “Growth Modeling Device” scans an onion every 24 hours with a laser, then uses a “fuse deposition modeler” to generate a plastic sculpture of that scan. When the model is done, a conveyor belt moves the recreated onion out of the way. The end result is a visual record of the onion’s growth. Pretty neat and somewhat surreal.