hello you wonderful and deeply creative people.
I have come to this forum for your aid and input on my current project for my university.
the aim is simple. to produce a robotic artist able to interpret an image and draw it.
now while for the project I could have produced a simple cartesian plotter I made decision to produce a polar plotter. showing a novel solution to the task.
deeply similar to this project http://roxen.github.io/polar-plotter/ but the aim is to produce a much more comprehensive form of image and hopefully with a much more accurate drawing capability and higher resolution.
within the project description it also outlined that the plotter should have the capability to vary the pressure of the drawing implement allowing for possibilities of shading.
this is where you fine ladies and gentlemen come in. I have produced a working mechanical prototype that I have been able to get to move and draw deeply simple shapes simply by giving the arduino step instructions. what I need to work on now is a system of taking an image and producing the suitable instructions to drive the stepper motors and arduino.
the plotter has a variable pressure element along with the arduino control. this variable pressure is produced through a servo. I was planning to use SVG files as my image files and give the arduino the ability to read and follow the directions of these SVG files however this does not really allow for the variable pressure/intensity that I require. my goal is to demo the system writing a sentence using human like behaviors or simple shapes but either of these examples need to have variable pressure in a similar manner as to a human hand would apply.
thank you very much in advance. all advice and comments regarding the system will be heavily referenced within my summary paper if you so wish

pictures for those who wish
http://imgur.com/APTkMMt,6N0kyTx,7qD8355,NuMYlmF,PgvciKp#4