Penelope was the first painting robot (so called because she was inspired by PEN plotters). She is a converted 3D printer. I removed the standard plastic extruder and replaced it with the paintbrush holder. I wrote custom Python code that allows Penelope to be used in a turn-taking manner. The human user makes a mark, then the canvas is photographed by a camera affixed to the top bar of the robot. Algorithms analyse the mark, decide on a response, and create the commands to allow the robot to execute the response. The process continues back and forth, as a collaboration between human and robot, until the user is satisfied with the painting. Penelope can paint on canvas up to 12x12cm.
LARA (Large Automated Robot Artist) is much bigger than Penelope. I wanted to scale up and paint larger than 12x12cm. I designed & built this gantry robot from scratch, using 3D printed parts for the joins between purchased components. The system runs on a BTT SKR 3 control board, with customised Marlin firmware. LARA enables painting on canvas up to 80x80cm. This video shows a few random clips of her at work (most of them sped up). I have become obsessed with one particular type of mark executed by the robot – a maze pattern. The pattern allows the robot to do what it does best: perfect straight lines and right angles. The robot can execute this type of mark much more quickly that I would be able to, allowing me to focus on flowy marks that I find more enjoyable to paint. The final pieces contrast my naturalistic marks with the robot’s rigid marks.
IRA (Interactive Robot Arm) runs the same collaborative painting program as Penelope. But she has animatronic eyes, which make her infinitely better. Robot arms also tend to be more fun to watch at work than gantry robots. IRA is also integrated with the ChatGPT API, enabling her to speak to the user. The API is fed the image of the user’s most recent mark, and hence IRA can make witty comments relating to the specific colour or shape of the mark (listen in at video timestamp 01:42). IRA was made possible with funding from Culture Liverpool.
IRA can also paint faces. A camera sits just under the animatronic eyes, and takes a picture of whoever sits in front of the robot. Python code converts the picture into an outline image using Google’s MediaPipe AI models for image segmentation and face landmark detection. The robot then paints this outline onto paper.