German Industrial Bot Takes Up the Art of Portraiture

Sketchbot graciously ignores your wrinkles and imperfections

By Rebecca Boyle Posted 02.28.2012 at 1:51 pm 3 Comments

Fraunhofer Sketchbot Sketchbot is programmed to ignore your wrinkles and draw a more youthful you. Fraunhofer IOSB

Though he was destined for manual labor, countless days spent toiling in the factory could not dampen this robot's dream. He was built to examine how objects reflect light, but he never failed to see the beauty in the patterns of light bouncing off a mundane object, say a child's backpack. He always wanted to be an artist, he just needed the chance!

Now the robot has been reassigned, fulfilling his ambitions to make awkwardly flabby line drawings of his human masters.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation equipped him with a camera and image processing software. Algorithms translate contrasts in the picture into robotic pencil strokes. The robot was even programmed to overlook a subject's tiny wrinkles, making the portrait-sitter look much more youthful.

The sketching industrial robot will be on display at a conference in Hanover, Germany, next month.

[Fraunhofer Research News]

Previous Article: The Department of Homeland Security's Favorite PopSci Posts

Next Article: Video: Microsoft IllumiShare Lets You Play Remotely With Physical Objects

3 Comments

Link to this comment

crapple

02/28/12 at 3:35 pm

I'd like to see it in action, can it only make straight lines? what is it's "hands" range of motion 360 degrees?

or does it create multiple straight lines in different angles to curve?

please advise

Link to this comment

crapple

02/28/12 at 3:36 pm

also what is the pressure at the tip, does it require special paper or does it rip normal letter paper

Link to this comment

bwinter714

02/29/12 at 6:14 pm

Crapple,

I'm an industrial robotics technician. That looks like an ABB 1400 robot from what I can see.

Most industrial robots (especially this one) are 6-axis machines. The Tool (in this case the pencil) would be able to be manipulated almost with the degree of touch that a human could. The robot can vary pressures of the tool on the medium (paper) to create lighter/darker lines, and very accurate curves and angles. In other words, robots can be delicate enough to change the diaper on your newborn (but obviously wouldn't happen), or can punch a hole in concrete (I've done that). It's all in the programming methods. They are remarkably versatile machines.

The problem is that the robot code (that is programmed by a human) has to "read" the vision data, then translate that into motion, not a very easy task to do. It can be done, but I would imagine the simple lines that you see have more to do with the programmer not having the time nor patients (sp?) to write a more detailed code for the extra "resolution" of a human face, if that makes any sense.