Double-Taker (Snout) is a project created by Golan Levin for the Robot 250 Festival in Pittsburgh. He writes:

The project consists of an eight-foot (2.5m) long industrial robot arm, costumed to resemble an enormous inchworm or elephant’s trunk, which responds in unexpected ways to the presence and movements of people in its vicinity. Sited on a low roof above a museum entrance, and governed by a real-time machine vision algorithm, Double-Taker (Snout) orients itself towards passers-by, tracking their bodies and suggesting an intelligent awareness of their activities. The goal of this kinetic system is to perform convincing “double-takes” at its visitors, in which the sculpture appears to be continually surprised by the presence of its own viewers — communicating, without words, that there is something uniquely surprising about each of us. Double-Taker (Snout) is currently active at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, where it will be on display through early August.

Check out this flickr set for behind-the-scenes photos of this project’s creation.