I/O Brush

Not many of us are aware of a device named I/O Brush which aims to wipe out the differences between “painting in the real world” and “painting in computing environment”. It came in existence during the PhD work(2003-05) of Kimiko Ryokai at MIT(Massachusetts Institute of Technology). At that time, Stefan Marti, who also contributed to the project, was the Research Assistant at MIT Media Lab.

How it works?

The new drawing tool- I/O Brush gives the freedom of exploring colors, textures, and movements found in surrounding objects by "picking up" and start drawing with them. Now, this is very much easy to use and realistic by nature in many ways with those amazing feature. The device looks like a normal physical paintbrush but inside the ring of those bristles, it has a small CCD video camera, and a ring of white LEDs around it. There are force sensors embedded inside the brush, which measure the applied pressure to the bristles. At the time of touching the surface, the LED lights around the camera temporarily turn on to provide required light for the camera.