ArtBots are painting machines that paint their environment in a unique artistic style. They collaborate with each other and with an artist to make a painting. Each robot will have a personality which will translate to their brush strokes and painting style.
These are two quotes from a couple of my favorite artists that inspired me to pursue the concept of a robot artist:
“[painting] is colored dirt smeared on a flat surface, usually stretched around some wooden sticks. And it is for me, the most magical of all mediums. You smear that colored dirt and it makes space where there is no space” ~Chuck Close
“The photograph meant the death of painting, but its resulting to be the opposite. Thanks to photography, art is resuscitating.” ~Salvador Dali
This is what I think the robots will look like in a gallery setting:
The way the robots will function is similar to the way that Jackoon functioned. There will be a video camera in the ceiling that will track the movement of the robots and will be used to know when the robots should paint. All the logic for the painting composition and collision detection will be done in a laptop and sent to the robots with wireless communication. This is an image of the set up:
The mechanics for the mobility of a couple of the robots are inspired by Theo Jansen’s leg design. The other robots will have servo motors and are inspired by hexapod.
I am not the only one using Theo’s leg design, I have a feeling that this design will become very popular as time goes by.
This is a rough sketch of what the robot using the Theo’s leg design may look like, the arrows point to the direction they are facing:
And this is a robot who’s leg design is similar to Theo’s concept but I am hoping that I will be able to get better movement from this design.
This is a simplified sketch of the isolated legs and the places where joints exist:
These are the physical legs that I built and am in the process of testing and some videos that I took of the rough motion that is achieved by the respective designs:
Theo Jansen Leg Design from Oscar G. Torres on Vimeo.
Theo Jansen Inspired Leg from Oscar G. Torres on Vimeo.
Stay tuned for updates on the ArtBots!