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An industrial robot to sketch portraits at CeBIT 2012, March 6-10, in Hanover, Germany. Image: Robotlab
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An
industrial robot as artist? From March 6-10, 2012, researchers will be
presenting what may at first seem to be a contradiction at CeBIT in
Hanover, Germany (Hall 9, Stand E08). There, interested visitors can
view the metal painter in action and can even have it sketch their own
faces.
Artists
are often colorful personalities. This one, though, comes across as
cool, precise and metallic—and is anything but extravagant. No
wonder—after all, it’s an industrial robot, one that will convert the
Fraunhofer stand at CeBIT into an art studio. Its artistic genius only
emerges if someone takes a seat on the model’s stool positioned in front
of the robot: first, its camera records an image of its model; then it
whips out its pencil and traces a portrait of the individual on its
easel. After around ten minutes have passed, it grabs the work and
proudly presents it to its public. This robot installation was developed
by artists in the robotlab group, at the Center for Art and Media ZKM
in Karlsruhe, Germany, some of whom are now employed at the Fraunhofer
Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB
in Karlsruhe.
But how does this technical production aid manage to provide an authentic rendering of a person’s facial expressions?
“We
have used an image-evaluation process that essentially equips the robot
with the sense of sight,” explains Martina Richter, a scientist at
IOSB. “There is a camera mounted on the robot’s arm that it uses first
to take the person’s picture.”
Edge-processing
software seeks out the contrasts in the image and translates these to
robot coordinates: to movements of the robot’s arm.
For
the researchers and artists, the main difficulty was to adjust the
algorithm for image processing so that the sketched image would leave
the impression of a portrait—and so that the high-tech artist would
overlook the tiny wrinkles but would still render the eyes. “We attach
great importance to the artistic look of the drawings that results, but
on the other hand, we have also equipped the robot with an automatic
system that enables it to carry out all of the steps itself. With this
installation, we have created an interface between art, science and
technology,” Richter is convinced.
The
robot’s everyday routine is less artistic, however: ordinarily,
researchers at IOSB use it to analyze the optical reflection properties
of various materials. They shine light on an object—a reflector of the
kind mounted on children’s school bags or jackets, for instance—from
various directions. The robot’s arm circles the material sample in a
hemispheric pattern, measuring how the object reflects light. Experts
refer to this as a material’s spatial reflection characteristics. This
helps design objects such as reflectors so that they return light in the
most bundled way possible to the direction from which it comes—to a car
driver, for instance. Then the reflector emits a bright flash that
draws the driver’s attention to the child. The objective is different
when it comes to paint effects on a car’s own surface: The aim there is
to display different hues to the observer depending on the direction of
view.
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