Bronze Robotics · 2020
ARTificial Autonomous Robot
- Bronze A' Design Award 2020 in Robotics
- CLIENT: University of Applied Sciences Wuerzburg-Schweinfurt
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 19,794
- Verification code 09C529D1C6 · Verify this award
Colors
About ARTificial Autonomous Robot
ARTificial is an autonomous painting robot that creates art with almost no human authorship. A generative adversarial network produces a new portrait, and a novel algorithm converts the digital image into coordinates. An industrial robot then paints the portrait on canvas with acrylic. After two buttons are pressed, the machine selects a random motif, takes paint, cleans the brush and works until the artwork is finished. A foundation of wood, concrete and steel supports safe operation. The installation questions whether art creation belongs only to intelligent beings.
About the Bronze A' Design Award
ARTificial Autonomous Robot is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. ARTificial Autonomous Robot is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. ARTificial Autonomous Robot splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- This robot is among the first fully autonomous machines which create art with barely any human authorship. Upon starting the system, the installation generates a completely new portrait with artificial intelligence. A novel algorithm converts the digital AI art into coordinates and the robot then paints it on canvas with acrylic. The sculpture works without human supervision and challenges the belief of art creation as a property of human or artificial intelligence.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Dimensions: 3000 X 2000 X 1500mm
Weight: 450kg - Tags
- artificial intelligence, ai, generative art, robot, industrial robot, algorithmic, software engineering, installation, robot, gan, generative adversarial network
- Production Technology
- The images are created with a generative adversarial network. The algorithm is written in Python with OpenCV and NumPy. The KUKA robot and the computer are connected with an Ethernet connection. The custom made foundation has been created out of wood, concrete, and steel. A novel algorithm has been developed for this project. The robot is capable of painting unlimited images without human supervision.
- Design Challenge
- This project required contacting a robot manufacturer, getting funds, transporting the robot and installing its numerous control interfaces. A foundation needed to be designed and constructed, to ensure the safe operation of this dangerous piece of industrial equipment. Finally, the author had to learn how to program a robot, as well as training the artificial Intelligence for multiple days on the most powerful GPU in existence and developing a completely novel algorithm for converting an AI image into coordinates in a safe manner.
- Research
- This project is based on image synthesis with artificial intelligence and the combination of machine learning with robotics. A novel algorithm and method have been developed, to research whether art-creation can be linked to intelligence and if this sculpture qualifies as an authentic artist. This research has been conducted in cooperation with KUKA and was supervised under the head of corporate research. The algorithmic basis of this image-to-coordinate-translation will be published in 2020.
- Inspiration
- Intelligence and consciousness seem to be almost exclusive to the human species. Similarly, the creation of art appears to be strongly bound to the intelligence of its author. This exclusivity between art creation and intelligence is so strong, that proving whether machines can be artists, is an essential step towards true artificial intelligence. As Art and intelligence still lack definitions, this project provokes discussions on whether this machine has these attributes.
- Project Duration
- This bachelor thesis has been created from February 2019 to July 2019. It demonstrated its ability during a two-day exhibition in August 2019, where it painted over 10 hours in front of a hundred visitors.
- Operation Flow
- The key element of this project is its autonomy. The robot decides what to generate on a random basis and paints as it wishes. This is an attempt to emulate human artists and their creative freedom as much as possible. Two buttons need to be pressed and the robot will start to generate a random image, take paint, clean its brush and will continue to paint until the artwork is finished.