Sylvia Todd, star of Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show, came up with the idea for the WaterColorBot because she wanted to create an art robot and enter it in the RoboGames competition. She approached us at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories about collaborating on the project, and we loved it.

Together we designed and built our first prototype in February, and had a nicely-working robot about a month later. As we realized that this project had a lot of appeal beyond just a one-off project, we started developing it into a kit. Sylvia exhibited her prototype at RoboGames (and won a Silver medal), and we also brought the WaterColorBot to Maker Faire, where thousands of people got to play with it.

Sylvia was also invited to the White House Science Fair in April, where she got to demonstrate the WaterColorBot for President Obama (pictures and media coverage here).