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Create a Robot Image from any text string

319 points| e1ven | 14 years ago |robohash.org

101 comments

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[+] e1ven|14 years ago|reply
Morning, I created this as an extended-weekend project, after realizing that I'd need these hashes as a part of larger project I'm working on.

Basically, Text goes in, Picture of a Robot comes out.

Where I'm using this is sort of like an identicon, to help quickly identify a poster's 4096-bit public keys, and see if you're talking to the same man.

Is it perfect? No, but it's a quick visual guide to any text, in the form of faces, which are easy for people to remember.

[+] donpark|14 years ago|reply
Robohash looks great. As the 'inventor' of Identicon, I've been meaning to revisit the subject with animal (identimal) or robot (identibot) themes in mind so it's nice to see your rendition of the later. Well done, sir.
[+] pavel_lishin|14 years ago|reply
What are the odds of a collision? How many unique elements are there that can make up a robot?
[+] celoyd|14 years ago|reply
This is extremely well done.

But incidentally:

see if you're talking to the same man

comes across a bit odd, seeing as lately a few women and children have been reported using IP addresses.

[+] vladev|14 years ago|reply
Any chance of open-sourcing this? :)
[+] MattBearman|14 years ago|reply
I love this, simply because http://robohash.org/mattbearman kinda looks like me :D

My one criticism is that it took me while to figure out (and I'm web dev) It wasn't clear until quite far down the page that you need to just put the text string after the URL.

I'd recommend having a text box into which pasted text can be robohashed prominent on the homepage, as well as clearer instructions.

Edit: just noticed there is a text box, was that there before? It could definitely be more noticeable :)

[+] e1ven|14 years ago|reply
I have added a box in the Last 5 minutes based on user-feedback. It's kinda a hack, but.. It's there ;)
[+] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
You write really good web site copy.
[+] e1ven|14 years ago|reply
Thank you, that's very kind of you to say. The whole project is very silly, so it doesn't make much sense to take it very seriously ;)
[+] erikwiffin|14 years ago|reply
It would be awesome if http://robohash.org/google.jpg generated a jpg, and http://robohash.org/google.png generated a png.

It would be even more awesome if http://robohash.org/favicon.ico generated a .ico file.

[+] e1ven|14 years ago|reply
Google.jpg does generate a jpg, but it's not the same as google.png;

The reason for that is that I'm hashing whatever you send in, including the extension.. Otherwise, if you passed file.txt and file.mp3 they'd come to the same hash.

[+] FrankBlack|14 years ago|reply
I think this is broken. I entered, "Bite my shiny, metal ass!" and all I got was some weird, Barney-like purple robot. I'd suggest special sub-routines for certain phrases including, but not limited to: "Ex-Ter-Mi-NATE!", "Danger, Will Robinson!", "Crush, Kill, Destroy!", "Beedeebeedeebeedeebeedee!", "We've got movie sign!", "Blah, blah, blah", "I'll be back", etc.

;)

[+] e1ven|14 years ago|reply
For 2.0, I'll add ?popculture=yes ;)
[+] spyder|14 years ago|reply
I quickly made a bookmarklet to robotize HN usernames:

  javascript:(document.body.innerHTML=document.body.innerHTML.replace(/<a href="user\?id=([^"]+)">([^<]+)<\/a>/g,'<a href="user?id=$1"><img src="http://robohash.org/$2?size=24x24">$2</a>'))()
[+] ayanb|14 years ago|reply
The Html source has a random robot as part of the author signature. This is neat!
[+] vog|14 years ago|reply
I find it pretty clever to generate Robot faces rather than whole robots or other pictures. Human brains are optimized for face recognition, which is why we can tell even minor differences in faces far easier than minor differences in other pictures.

Therefore, generating human faces would serve this purpose even better, but those are at risk of falling into the uncanny valley. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)

Using clearly non-human faces (such as Robot faces) avoids that problem.

[+] aquark|14 years ago|reply
This is brilliant.

We have a stress testing tool that uses little images of various robots in its UI to represent different test patterns ... now I can automate them!

[+] capnrefsmmat|14 years ago|reply
What sort of "Super-Awesome new forum" is this for?
[+] Luc|14 years ago|reply
Very very nice. This has convinced me to use this technique for non-player characters in a game I am working on. I see you licensed the artwork from three artists. Did you have it especially drawn for you, or was it already released under some CC license?
[+] e1ven|14 years ago|reply
I had it drawn for the project at 99designs.
[+] tomatohs|14 years ago|reply
An easy way to flip the images left and right would be great. I love the first set of robots, but I wouldn't use them in my website as they'd be placed on the far left of the browser window, looking away from the page.
[+] carbocation|14 years ago|reply
If/when you debut the [robohash] watermark in the image, it would be great if you would also debut a paid plan without the watermark. Plus, paid plans give people confidence that your service will continue to exist.
[+] e1ven|14 years ago|reply
I think it would be pretty silly to add a paid plan to a weekend project. ;)

I'll only do that, with the watermark, if it goes over what my bottom-rung Linode+CDN can deliver.

[+] nawariata|14 years ago|reply 

    Dr. Chandra, RobotCrunch
Subtle jab at Arrington? =)
[+] e1ven|14 years ago|reply
The Testimonials, and the hover-text on the robots change on every reload. Try it! Hammer the site more ;)